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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13180 ***
+
+[Illustration: "'Then in charity say that word!'"]
+
+THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
+
+BY R. W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+
+TO MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM A. HALL
+
+
+1906
+
+
+
+     _For the harmony of the world, like that of a harp, is made up of
+     discords._
+
+     --HERACLITUS.
+
+
+
+THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+He was thirty-three, agreeable to look at, equipped with as much culture
+and intelligence as is tolerated east of Fifth Avenue and west of
+Madison. He had a couple of elaborate rooms at the Lenox Club, a larger
+income than seemed to be good for him, and no profession. It follows
+that he was a pessimist before breakfast. Besides, it's a bad thing for
+a man at thirty-three to come to the conclusion that he has seen all the
+most attractive girls in the world and that they have been vastly
+overrated. So, when a club servant with gilt buttons on his coat tails
+knocked at the door, the invitation to enter was not very cordial. He of
+the buttons knocked again to take the edge off before he entered; then
+opened the door and unburdened himself as follows:
+
+"Mr. Gatewood, sir, Mr. Kerns's compliments, and wishes to know if 'e
+may 'ave 'is coffee served at your tyble, sir."
+
+Gatewood, before the mirror, gave a vicious twist to his tie, inserted a
+pearl scarf pin, and regarded the effect with gloomy approval.
+
+"Say to Mr. Kerns that I am--flattered," he replied morosely; "and tell
+Henry I want him."
+
+"'Enry, sir? Yes, sir."
+
+The servant left; one of the sleek club valets came in, softly sidling.
+
+"Henry!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I'll wear a white waistcoat, if you don't object."
+
+The valet laid out half a dozen.
+
+"Which one do you usually wear when I'm away, Henry? Which is _your_
+favorite?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Pick it out and don't look injured, and _don't_ roll up your eyes. I
+merely desire to borrow it for one day."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"And, Henry, hereafter always help yourself to my _best_ cigars. Those I
+smoke may injure you. I've attempted to conceal the keys, but you will,
+of course, eventually discover them under that loose tile on the
+hearth."
+
+"Yes, sir; thanky', sir," returned the valet gravely.
+
+"And--Henry!"
+
+"Sir?" with martyred dignity.
+
+"When you are tired of searching for my olivine and opal pin, just find
+it, for a change. I'd like to wear that pin for a day or two if it would
+not inconvenience you."
+
+"Very good, sir; I will 'unt it hup, sir."
+
+Gatewood put on his coat, took hat and gloves from the unabashed valet,
+and sauntered down to the sunny breakfast room, where he found Kerns
+inspecting a morning paper and leisurely consuming grapefruit with a
+cocktail on the side.
+
+"Hullo," observed Kerns briefly.
+
+"I'm not on the telephone," snapped Gatewood.
+
+"I beg your pardon; how are you, dear friend?"
+
+"_I_ don't know how I am," retorted Gatewood irritably; "how the devil
+should a man know how he is?"
+
+"Everything going to the bowwows, _as_ usual, dear friend?"
+
+"_As_ usual. Oh, read your paper, Tommy! You know well enough I'm not
+one of those tail-wagging imbeciles who wakes up in the morning singing
+like a half-witted lark. Why should I, with this taste in my mouth, and
+the laundress using vitriol, and Henry sneering at my cigars?" He yawned
+and cast his eyes toward the ceiling. "Besides, there's too much gilt
+all over this club! There's too much everywhere. Half the world is
+stucco, the rest rococo. Where's that Martini I bid for?"
+
+Kerns, undisturbed, applied himself to cocoa and toasted muffins.
+Grapefruit and an amber-tinted accessory were brought for the other and
+sampled without mirth. However, a little later Gatewood said: "Well, are
+you going to read your paper all day?"
+
+"What you need," said Kerns, laying the paper aside, "is a job--any old
+kind would do, dear friend."
+
+"I don't want to make any more money."
+
+"I don't want you to. I mean a job where you'd lose a lot and be scared
+into thanking Heaven for carfare. _You're_ a nice object for the
+breakfast table!"
+
+"Bridge. I will be amiable enough by noon time."
+
+"Yes, you're endurable by noon time, as a rule. When you're forty you
+may be tolerated after five o'clock; when you're fifty your wife and
+children might even venture to emerge from the cellar after dinner--"
+
+"Wife!"
+
+"I said wife," replied Kerns, as he calmly watched his man.
+
+He had managed it well, so far, and he was wise enough not to overdo it.
+An interval of silence was what the situation required.
+
+"I wish I _had_ a wife," muttered Gatewood after a long pause.
+
+"Oh, haven't you said that every day for five years? Wife! Look at the
+willing assortment of dreams playing Sally Waters around town. Isn't
+this borough a bower of beauty--a flowery thicket where the prettiest
+kind in all the world grow under glass or outdoors? And what do you do?
+You used to pretend to prowl about inspecting the yearly crop of posies,
+growling, cynical, dissatisfied; but you've even given that up. Now you
+only point your nose skyward and squall for a mate, and yowl mournfully
+that you never have seen your ideal. _I_ know _you_."
+
+"I never have seen my ideal," retorted Gatewood sulkily, "but I know she
+exists--somewhere between heaven and Hoboken."
+
+"You're sure, are you?"
+
+"Oh, _I'm_ sure. And, rich or poor, good or bad, she was fashioned for
+me alone. That's a theory of mine; _you_ needn't accept it; in fact,
+it's none of your business, Tommy."
+
+"All the same," insisted Kerns, "did you ever consider that if your
+ideal does exist somewhere, it is morally up to you to find her?"
+
+"Haven't I inspected every débutante for ten years? You don't expect me
+to advertise for an ideal, do you--object, matrimony?"
+
+Kerns regarded him intently. "Now, I'm going to make a vivid suggestion,
+Jack. In fact, that's why I subjected myself to the ordeal of
+breakfasting with you. It's none of my business, as you so kindly put
+it, but--_shall_ I suggest something?"
+
+"Go ahead," replied Gatewood, tranquilly lighting a cigarette. "I know
+what you'll say."
+
+"No, you don't. Firstly, you are having such a good time in this world
+that you don't really enjoy yourself--isn't that so?"
+
+"I--well I--well, let it go at that."
+
+"Secondly, with all your crimes and felonies, you have one decent trait
+left: you really would like to fall in love. And I suspect you'd even
+marry."
+
+"There are grounds," said Gatewood guardedly, "for your suspicions. _Et
+après?_"
+
+"Good. Then there's a way! I know--"
+
+"Oh, don't tell me you 'know a girl,' or anything like that!" began
+Gatewood sullenly. "I've heard that before, and I won't meet her."
+
+"I don't want you to; I don't know anybody. All I desire to say is this:
+I do know a way. The other day I noticed a sign on Fifth Avenue:
+
+
+                        KEEN & CO.
+                  TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
+
+It was a most extraordinary sign; and having a little unemployed
+imagination I began to speculate on how Keen & Co. might operate, and I
+wondered a little, too, that, the conditions of life in this city could
+enable a firm to make a living by devoting itself exclusively to the
+business of hunting up missing people."
+
+Kerns paused, partly to light a cigarette, partly for diplomatic
+reasons.
+
+"What has all this to do with me?" inquired Gatewood curiously; and
+diplomacy scored one.
+
+"Why not try Keen & Co.?"
+
+"Try them? Why? I haven't lost anybody, have I?"
+
+"You haven't, precisely _lost anybody_, but the fact remains that you
+can't _find somebody_," returned Kerns coolly. "Why not employ Keen &
+Co. to look for her?"
+
+"Look for whom, in Heaven's name?"
+
+"Your ideal."
+
+"Look for--for my ideal! Kerns, you're crazy. How the mischief can
+anybody hunt for somebody who doesn't exist?"
+
+"You _say_ that she _does_ exist."
+
+"But I can't prove it, man."
+
+"You don't have to; it's up to Keen & Co. to prove it. That's why you
+employ them."
+
+"What wild nonsense you talk! Keen & Co. might, perhaps, be able to
+trace the concrete, but how are they going to trace and find the
+abstract?"
+
+"She isn't abstract; she is a lovely, healthy, and youthful concrete
+object--if, as you say, she _does_ exist."
+
+"How can I _prove_ she exists?"
+
+"You don't have to; they do that."
+
+"Look here," said Gatewood almost angrily, "do you suppose that if I
+were ass enough to go to these people and tell them that I wanted to
+find my ideal--"
+
+"_Don't_ tell them _that_!"
+
+"But how--"
+
+"There is no necessity for going into such trivial details. All you
+need say is: 'I am very anxious to find a young lady'--and then describe
+her as minutely as you please. Then, when they locate a girl of that
+description they'll notify you; you will go, judge for yourself whether
+she is the one woman on earth--and, if disappointed, you need only shake
+your head and murmur: 'Not _the_ same!' And it's for them to find
+another."
+
+"I won't do it!" said Gatewood hotly.
+
+"Why not? At least, it would be amusing. You haven't many mental
+resources, and it might occupy you for a week or two."
+
+Gatewood glared.
+
+"You have a pleasant way of putting things this morning, haven't you?"
+
+"I don't want to be pleasant: I want to jar you. Don't I care enough
+about you to breakfast with you? Then I've a right to be pleasantly
+unpleasant. I can't bear to watch your mental and spiritual
+dissolution--a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity
+for being nobody in particular--which is the sort of man this nation
+needs. Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk? Do
+you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the
+avenue--a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?--the pompous obsequies of a
+dead intellect?--a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of
+all that should be deathless in a man? Why, Jack, I'd rather see you in
+bankruptcy--I'd rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single
+flat on seven dollars and a half a week--I'd almost rather see you every
+day at breakfast than have it come to that!
+
+"Wake up and get jocund with life! Why, you could have all good citizens
+stung to death if you chose. It isn't that I want you to make money; but
+I want you to worry over somebody besides yourself--not in Wall
+Street--a fool and its money are soon parted. But in your own home,
+where a beautiful wife and seven angel children have you dippy and close
+to the ropes; where the housekeeper gets a rake off, and the cook is
+red-headed and comes from Sligo, and the butler's cousin will bear
+watching, and the chauffeur is a Frenchman, and the coachman's uncle is
+a Harlem vet, and every scullion in the establishment lies, drinks,
+steals, and supports twenty satiated relatives at your expense. That
+would mean the making of you; for, after all, Jack, you are no
+genius--you're a plain, non-partisan, uninspired, clean-built, wholesome
+citizen, thank God!--the sort whose unimaginative mission is to pitch in
+with eighty-odd millions of us and, like the busy coral creatures,
+multiply with all your might, and make this little old Republic the
+greatest, biggest, finest article that an overworked world has ever yet
+put up! . . . Now you can call for help if you choose."
+
+Gatewood's breath returned slowly. In an intimacy of many years he had
+never suspected that sort of thing from Kerns. That is why, no doubt,
+the opinions expressed by Kerns stirred him to an astonishment too
+innocent to harbor anger or chagrin.
+
+And when Kerns stood up with an unembarrassed laugh, saying, "I'm going
+to the office; see you this evening?" Gatewood replied rather vacantly:
+"Oh, yes; I'm dining here. Good-by, Tommy."
+
+Kerns glanced at his watch, lingering. "Was there anything you wished to
+ask me, Jack?" he inquired guilelessly.
+
+"Ask you? No, I don't think so."
+
+"Oh; I had an idea you might care to know where Keen & Co. were to be
+found."
+
+"_That_," said Gatewood firmly, "is foolish."
+
+"I'll write the address for you, anyway," rejoined Kerns, scribbling it
+and handing the card to his friend.
+
+Then he went down the stairs, several at a time, eased in conscience,
+satisfied that he had done his duty by a friend he cared enough for to
+breakfast with.
+
+"Of course," he ruminated as he crawled into a hansom and lay back
+buried in meditation--"of course there may be nothing in this Keen & Co.
+business. But it will stir him up and set him thinking; and the longer
+Keen & Co. take to hunt up an imaginary lady that doesn't exist, the
+more anxious and impatient poor old Jack Gatewood will become, until
+he'll catch the fever and go cantering about with that one fixed idea in
+his head. And," added Kerns softly, "no New Yorker in his right mind can
+go galloping through these five boroughs very long before he's roped,
+tied, and marked by the 'only girl in the world'--the _only_ girl--if
+you don't care to turn around and look at another million girls
+precisely like her. O Lord!--precisely like her!"
+
+Here was a nice exhorter to incite others to matrimony.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Meanwhile, Gatewood was walking along Fifth Avenue, more or less soothed
+by the May sunshine. First, he went to his hatters, looked at straw
+hats, didn't like them, protested, and bought one, wishing he had
+strength of mind enough to wear it home. But he hadn't. Then he entered
+the huge white marble palace of his jeweler, left his watch to be
+regulated, caught a glimpse of a girl whose hair and neck resembled the
+hair and neck of his ideal, sidled around until he discovered that she
+was chewing gum, and backed off, with a bitter smile, into the avenue
+once more.
+
+Every day for years he had had glimpses of girls whose hair, hands,
+figures, eyes, hats, carriage, resembled the features required by his
+ideal; there always was something wrong somewhere. And, as he strolled
+moodily, a curious feeling of despair seized him--something that, even
+in his most sentimental moments, even amid the most unexpected
+disappointment, he had never before experienced.
+
+"I do want to love _somebody_!" he found himself saying half aloud; "I
+want to marry; I--" He turned to look after three pretty children with
+their maids--"I want several like those--several!--seven--ten--I don't
+care how many! I want a house to worry me, just as Tommy described it; I
+want to see the same girl across the breakfast table--or she can sip her
+cocoa in bed if she desires--" A slow, modest blush stole over his
+features; it was one of the nicest things he ever did. Glancing up, he
+beheld across the way a white sign, ornamented with strenuous crimson
+lettering:
+
+                        KEEN & CO.
+                  TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
+
+The moment he discovered it, he realized he had been covertly hunting
+for it; he also realized that he was going to climb the stairs. He
+hadn't quite decided what he meant to do after that; nor was his mind
+clear on the matter when he found himself opening a door of opaque glass
+on which was printed in red:
+
+                        KEEN & CO.
+
+He was neither embarrassed nor nervous when he found himself in a big
+carpeted anteroom where a negro attendant bowed him to a seat and took
+his card; and he looked calmly around to see what was to be seen.
+
+Several people occupied easy chairs in various parts of the room--an old
+woman very neatly dressed, clutching in her withered hand a photograph
+which she studied and studied with tear-dimmed eyes; a young man wearing
+last year's most fashionable styles in everything except his features:
+and soap could have aided him there; two policemen, helmets resting on
+their knees; and, last of all, a rather thin child of twelve, staring
+open-mouthed at everybody, a bundle of soiled clothing under one arm.
+Through an open door he saw a dozen young women garbed in black, with
+white cuffs and collars, all rattling away steadily at typewriters.
+Every now and then, from some hidden office, a bell rang decisively, and
+one of the girls would rise from her machine and pass noiselessly out of
+sight to obey the summons. From time to time, too, the darky servant
+with marvelous manners would usher somebody through the room where the
+typewriters were rattling, into the unseen office. First the old woman
+went--shakily, clutching her photograph; then the thin child with the
+bundle, staring at everything; then the two fat policemen, in portentous
+single file, helmets in their white-gloved hands, oiled hair glistening.
+
+Gatewood's turn was approaching; he waited without any definite
+emotion, watching newcomers enter to take the places of those who had
+been summoned. He hadn't the slightest idea of what he was to say; nor
+did it worry him. A curious sense of impending good fortune left him
+pleasantly tranquil; he picked up, from the silver tray on the table at
+his elbow, one of the firm's business cards, and scanned it with
+interest:
+
+     KEEN & CO.
+
+     TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
+
+     _Keen & Co. are prepared to locate the whereabouts of anybody on
+     earth. No charges will be made unless the person searched for is
+     found._
+
+     _Blanks on application._
+
+     WESTREL KEEN, _Manager_.
+
+"Mistuh Keen will see you, suh," came a persuasive voice at his elbow;
+and he rose and followed the softly moving colored servant out of the
+room, through a labyrinth of demure young women at their typewriters,
+then sharply to the right and into a big, handsomely furnished office,
+where a sleepy-looking elderly gentleman rose from an armchair and
+bowed. There could not be the slightest doubt that he _was_ a
+gentleman; every movement, every sound he uttered, settled the fact.
+
+"Mr. Keen?"
+
+"Mr. Gatewood?"--with a quiet certainty which had its charm. "This is
+very good of you."
+
+Gatewood sat down and looked at his host. Then he said: "I'm searching
+for somebody, Mr. Keen, whom you are not likely to find."
+
+"I doubt it," said Keen pleasantly.
+
+Gatewood smiled. "If," he said, "you will undertake to find the person
+_I_ cannot find, I must ask you to accept a retainer."
+
+"We don't require retainers," replied Keen. "Unless we find the person
+sought for, we make no charges, Mr. Gatewood."
+
+"I must ask you to do so in my case. It is not fair that you should
+undertake it on other terms. I desire to make a special arrangement with
+you. Do you mind?"
+
+"What arrangement had you contemplated?" inquired Keen, amused.
+
+"Only this: charge me in advance exactly what you would charge if
+successful. And, on the other hand, do not ask me for detailed
+information--I mean, do not insist on any information that I decline to
+give. Do you mind taking up such an extraordinary and unbusinesslike
+proposition, Mr. Keen?"
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons looked up sharply:
+
+"About how much information _do_ you decline to give, Mr. Gatewood?"
+
+"About enough to incriminate and degrade," replied the young man,
+laughing.
+
+The elderly gentleman sat silent, apparently buried in meditation. Once
+or twice his pleasant steel-gray eyes wandered over Gatewood as an
+expert, a connoisseur, glances at a picture and assimilates its history,
+its value, its artistic merit, its every detail in one practiced glance.
+
+"I think we may take up this matter for you, Mr. Gatewood," he said,
+smiling his singularly agreeable smile.
+
+"But--but you would first desire to know something about me--would you
+not?"
+
+Keen looked at him: "You will not mistake me--you will consider it
+entirely inoffensive--if I say that I know something about you, Mr.
+Gatewood?"
+
+"About _me_? How can you? Of course, there is the social register and
+the club lists and all that--"
+
+"And many, many sources of information which are necessary in such a
+business as this, Mr. Gatewood. It is a necessity for us to be almost
+as well informed as our clients' own lawyers. I could pay you no
+sincerer compliment than to undertake your case. I am half inclined to
+do so even _without_ a retainer. Mind, I haven't yet said that I _will_
+take it."
+
+"I prefer to regulate any possible indebtedness in advance," said
+Gatewood.
+
+"As you wish," replied the older man, smiling. "In that case, suppose
+you draw your check" (he handed Gatewood a fountain pen as the young man
+fished a check-book from his pocket)--"your check for--well, say for
+$5,000, to the order of Keen & Co."
+
+Gatewood met his eye without wincing; he was in for it now; and he was
+always perfectly game. He had brought it upon himself; it was his own
+proposition. Not that he would have for a moment considered the sum as
+high--or any sum exorbitant--if there had been a chance of success; one
+cannot compare and weigh such matters. But how could there be any chance
+for success?
+
+As he slowly smoothed out the check and stub, pen poised, Keen was
+saying: "Of course, we should succeed sooner or later--if we took up
+your case. We might succeed to-morrow--to-day. That would mean a large
+profit for us. But we might not succeed to-day, or next month, or even
+next year. That would leave us little or no profit; and, as it is our
+custom to go on until we do succeed, no matter how long it may require,
+you see, Mr. Gatewood, I should be taking all sorts of chances. It might
+even cost us double your retainer before we found her--"
+
+"Her? How did--_why_ do you say '_her_'?"
+
+"Am I wrong?" asked Keen, smiling.
+
+"No--you are right."
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons sank into abstraction again. Gatewood waited,
+hoping that his case might be declined, yet ready to face any music
+started at his own request.
+
+"She is young," mused Keen aloud, "very beautiful and accomplished. _Is_
+she wealthy?" He looked up mildly.
+
+Gatewood said: "I don't know--the truth is I don't care--" And stopped.
+
+"O-ho!" mused Keen slowly. "I--think--I understand. Am I wrong, Mr.
+Gatewood, in surmising that this young lady whom you seek is, in your
+eyes, very--I may say ideally gifted?"
+
+"She is my ideal," replied the young man, coloring.
+
+"_Ex_actly. And--her general allure?"
+
+"Charming!"
+
+"_Ex_actly; but to be a trifle more precise--if you could give me a
+sketch, an idea, a mere outline delicately tinted, now. _Is_ she more
+blond than brunette?"
+
+"Yes--but her eyes are brown. I--I insist on that."
+
+"Why should you not? _You_ know her; I don't," said Keen, laughing. "I
+merely wished to form a mental picture. . . . You say her hair is--is--"
+
+"It's full of sunny color; that's all I can say."
+
+"_Ex_actly--I see. A rare and lovely combination with brown eyes and
+creamy skin, Mr. Gatewood. I fancy she might be, perhaps, an inch or two
+under your height?"
+
+"Just about that. Her hands should be--_are_ beautiful--"
+
+"_Ex_actly. The ensemble is most vividly portrayed, Mr. Gatewood;
+and--you have intimated that her lack of fortune--er--we might almost
+say her pecuniary distress--is more than compensated for by her
+accomplishments, character, and very unusual beauty. . . . _Did_ I so
+understand you, Mr. Gatewood?"
+
+"That's what I meant, anyhow," he said, flushing up.
+
+"You _did_ mean it?"
+
+"I did: I do."
+
+"Then we take your case, Mr. Gatewood. . . . No haste about the check,
+my dear sir--pray consider us at your service."
+
+But Gatewood doggedly filled in the check and handed it to the Tracer of
+Lost Persons.
+
+"I wish you happiness," said the older man in a low voice. "The lady you
+describe exists; it is for us to discover her."
+
+"Thank you," stammered Gatewood, astounded.
+
+Keen touched an electric button; a moment later a young girl entered the
+room.
+
+"Miss Southerland, Mr. Gatewood. Will you be kind enough to take Mr.
+Gatewood's dictation in Room 19?"
+
+For a second Gatewood stared--as though in the young girl before him the
+ghost of his ideal had risen to confront him--only for a second; then he
+bowed, matching her perfect acknowledgment of his presence by a bearing
+and courtesy which must have been inbred to be so faultless.
+
+And he followed her to Room 19.
+
+What had Keen meant by saying, "The lady you describe exists!" Did this
+remarkable elderly gentleman suspect that it was to be a hunt for an
+ideal? Had he deliberately entered into such a bargain? Impossible!
+
+His disturbed thoughts reverted to the terms of the bargain, the entire
+enterprise, the figures on his check. His own amazing imbecility
+appalled him. What idiocy! What sudden madness had seized him to
+entangle himself in such unheard-of negotiations! True, he had played
+bridge until dawn the night before, but, on awaking, he had discovered
+no perceptible hold-over. It must have been sheer weakness of intellect
+that permitted him to be dominated by the suggestions of Kerns. And now
+the game was on: the jack declared, cards dealt, and his ante was up.
+Had he openers?
+
+Room 19, duly labeled with its number on the opaque glass door,
+contained a desk, a table and typewriter, several comfortable chairs,
+and a window opening on Fifth Avenue, through which the eastern sun
+poured a stream of glory, washing curtain, walls, and ceiling with
+palest gold.
+
+And all this time, preoccupied with new impressions and his own growing
+chagrin, he watched the girl who conducted him with all the unconscious
+assurance and grace of a young chatelaine passing through her own domain
+under escort of a distinguished guest.
+
+When they had entered Room 19, she half turned, but he forestalled her
+and closed the door, and she passed before him with a perceptible
+inclination of her finely modeled head, seating herself at the desk by
+the open window. He took an armchair at her elbow and removed his
+gloves, looking at her expectantly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"This is a list of particular and general questions for you to answer,
+Mr. Gatewood," she said, handing him a long slip of printed matter. "The
+replies to such questions as you are able or willing to answer you may
+dictate to me." The beauty of her modulated voice was scarcely a
+surprise--no woman who moved and carried herself as did this tall young
+girl in black and white could reasonably be expected to speak with less
+distinction--yet the charm of her voice, from the moment her lips
+unclosed, so engrossed him that the purport of her speech escaped him.
+
+"Would you mind saying it once more?" he asked.
+
+She did so; he attempted to concentrate his attention, and succeeded
+sufficiently to look as though some vestige of intellect remained in
+him. He saw her pick up a pad and pencil; the contour and grace of two
+deliciously fashioned hands arrested his mental process once more.
+
+"I _beg_ your pardon," he said hastily; "what were you saying, Miss
+Southerland?"
+
+"Nothing, Mr. Gatewood. I did not speak." And he realized, hazily, that
+she had not spoken--that it was the subtle eloquence of her youth and
+loveliness that had appealed like a sudden voice--a sound faintly
+exquisite echoing his own thought of her.
+
+Troubled, he looked at the slip of paper in his hand; it was headed:
+
+                    SPECIAL DESCRIPTION BLANK
+                         (_Form K_)
+
+And he read it as carefully as he was able to--the curious little clamor
+of his pulses, the dazed sense of elation, almost of expectation,
+distracting his attention all the time.
+
+"I wish you would read it to me," he said; "that would give me time to
+think up answers."
+
+"If you wish," she assented pleasantly, swinging around toward him in
+her desk chair. Then she crossed one knee over the other to support the
+pad, and, bending above it, lifted her brown eyes. She could have done
+nothing in the world more distracting at that moment.
+
+"What is the sex of the person you desire to find, Mr. Gatewood?"
+
+"Her sex? I--well, I fancy it is feminine."
+
+She wrote after "Sex" the words "She is probably feminine"; looked at
+him absently, glanced at what she had written, flushed a little, rubbed
+out the "she is probably," wondering why a moment's mental wandering
+should have committed her to absurdity.
+
+"Married?" she asked with emphasis.
+
+"No," he replied, startled; then, vexed, "I beg your pardon--you mean to
+ask if _she_ is married!"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, Mr. Gatewood; it's the next question, you
+see"--she held out the blank toward him. "Is the person you are looking
+for married?"
+
+"Oh, no; she isn't married, either--at least--trust--not--because if she
+_is_ I don't want to find her!" he ended, entangled in an explanation
+which threatened to involve him deeper than he desired. And, looking up,
+he saw the beautiful brown eyes regarding him steadily. They reverted to
+the paper at once, and the white fingers sent the pencil flying.
+
+"He trusts that she is unmarried, but if she _is_ (underlined) married
+he doesn't want to find her," she wrote.
+
+"That," she explained, "goes under the head of 'General Remarks' at the
+bottom of the page"--she held it out, pointing with her pencil. He
+nodded, staring at her slender hand.
+
+"Age?" she continued, setting the pad firmly on her rounded, yielding
+knee and looking up at him.
+
+"Age? Well, I--as a matter of fact, I could only venture a surmise. You
+know," he said earnestly, "how difficult it is to guess ages, don't you,
+Miss Southerland?"
+
+"How old do you _think_ she is? Could you not hazard a guess--judging,
+say, from her appearance?"
+
+"I have no data--no experience to guide me." He was becoming involved
+again. "Would you, for practice, permit me first to guess your age, Miss
+Southerland?"
+
+"Why--yes--if you think that might help you to guess hers."
+
+So he leaned back in his armchair and considered her a very long
+time--having a respectable excuse to do so. Twenty times he forgot he
+was looking at her for any purpose except that of disinterested delight,
+and twenty times he remembered with a guilty wince that it was a matter
+of business.
+
+"Perhaps I had better tell you," she suggested, her color rising a
+little under his scrutiny.
+
+"Is it eighteen? Just _her_ age!"
+
+"Twenty-one, Mr. Gatewood--and you _said_ you didn't know her age."
+
+"I have just remembered that I _thought_ it might be eighteen; but I
+dare say I was shy three years in her case, too. You may put it down at
+twenty-one."
+
+For the slightest fraction of a second the brown eyes rested on his, the
+pencil hovered in hesitation. Then the eyes fell, and the moving fingers
+wrote.
+
+"Did you write 'twenty-one'?" he inquired carelessly.
+
+"I did not, Mr. Gatewood."
+
+"What did you write?"
+
+"I wrote: 'He doesn't appear to know much about her age.'"
+
+"But I _do_ know--"
+
+"You said--" They looked at one another earnestly.
+
+"The next question," she continued with composure, "is: 'Date and place
+of birth?' Can you answer any part of _that_ question?"
+
+"I trust I may be able to--some day. . . . What _are_ you writing?"
+
+"I'm writing: 'He trusts he may be able to, some day.' Wasn't that what
+you said?"
+
+"Yes, I did say that. I--I'm not perfectly sure what I meant by it."
+
+She passed to the next question:
+
+"Height?"
+
+"About five feet six," he said, fascinated gaze on her.
+
+"Hair?"
+
+"More gold than brown--full of--er--gleams--" She looked up quickly; his
+eyes reverted to the window rather suddenly. He had been looking at her
+hair.
+
+"Complexion?" she continued after a shade of hesitation.
+
+"It's a sort of delicious mixture--bisque, tinted with a pinkish
+bloom--ivory and rose--" He was explaining volubly, when she began to
+shake her head, timing each shake to his words.
+
+"Really, Mr. Gatewood, I think you are hopelessly vague on that
+point--unless you desire to convey the impression that she is speckled."
+
+"Speckled!" he repeated, horrified. "Why, I am describing a woman who is
+my ideal of beauty--"
+
+But she had already gone to the next question:
+
+"Teeth?"
+
+"P-p-perfect p-p-pearls!" he stammered. The laughing red mouth closed
+like a flower at dusk, veiling the sparkle of her teeth.
+
+Was he trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? He
+did not look like that sort of man; yet _why_ was he watching her so
+closely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teeth
+when she laughed?
+
+"Eyes?" Her own dared him to continue what, coincidence or not, was
+plainly a description of herself.
+
+"B-b-b--" He grew suddenly timorous, hesitating, pretending to a
+perplexity which was really a healthy scare. For she was frowning.
+
+"Curious I can't think of the color of her eyes," he said; "is--isn't
+it?"
+
+She coldly inspected her pad and made a correction; but all she did was
+to rub out a comma and put another in its place. Meanwhile, Gatewood,
+chin in his hand, sat buried in profound thought. "_Were_ they blue?" he
+murmured to himself aloud, "or _were_ they brown? Blue begins with a _b_
+and brown begins with a _b_. I'm convinced that her eyes began with a
+_b_. They were not, therefore, gray or green, because," he added in a
+burst of confidence, "it is utterly impossible to spell gray or green
+with a _b_!"
+
+Miss Southerland looked slightly astonished.
+
+"All you can recollect, then, is that the color of her eyes began with
+the letter _b_?"
+
+"That is absolutely all I can remember; but I _think_ they
+_were_--brown."
+
+"If they _were_ brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking out
+of the window.
+
+"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are you
+writing?"
+
+"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.
+
+"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.
+
+"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color,
+shape, its sensitive beauty, its--_What_ did you write just then?"
+
+"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"
+
+"I don't want you to! I want--"
+
+"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry,
+but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction.
+Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"
+
+"Oh, I _do_ mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe her
+figure--"
+
+"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in a
+glimmering transition from vexation to amusement. For, after all, it
+could be _only_ a coincidence that this young man should be describing
+features peculiar to herself.
+
+"Couldn't you write, 'Venus-of-Milo-like'?" he inquired. "That is
+laconic."
+
+"I could--if it's true. But if you mean it for praise--I--don't think
+any modern woman would be flattered."
+
+"I always supposed that she of Milo had an ideal figure," he said,
+perplexed.
+
+She wrote, "A good figure." Then, propping her rounded chin on one
+lovely white hand, she glanced at the next question:
+
+"Hands?"
+
+"White, beautiful, rose-tipped, slender yet softly and firmly rounded--"
+
+"How _can_ they be soft and firm, too, Mr. Gatewood?" she protested;
+then, surprising his guilty eyes fixed on her hands, hastily dropped
+them and sat up straight, level-browed, cold as marble. _Was_ he
+deliberately being rude to her?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+As a matter of fact, he was not. Too poor in imagination to invent, on
+the spur of the moment, charms and qualities suited to his ideal, he
+had, at first unconsciously, taken as a model the girl before him; quite
+unconsciously and innocently at first--then furtively, and with a
+dawning perception of the almost flawless beauty he was secretly
+plagiarizing. Aware, now, that something had annoyed her; aware, too, at
+the same moment that there appeared to be nothing lacking in her to
+satisfy his imagination of the ideal, he began to turn redder than he
+had ever turned in all his life.
+
+Several minutes of sixty seconds each ensued before he ventured to stir
+a finger. And it was only when she bent again very gravely over her pad
+that he cautiously eased a cramped muscle or two, and drew a breath--a
+long, noiseless, deep and timid respiration. He realized the enormity of
+what he had been doing--how close he had come to giving unpardonable
+offense by drawing a perfect portrait of her as the person he desired to
+find through the good offices of Keen & Co.
+
+But there was no such person--unless she had a double: for what more
+could a man desire than the ideal traits he had been able to describe
+only by using her as his inspiration.
+
+When he ventured to look at her, one glance was enough to convince him
+that she, too, had noticed the parallel--had been forced to recognize
+her own features in the portrait he had constructed of an ideal. And she
+had caught him in absent-minded contemplation of the hands he had been
+describing. He knew that his face was the face of a guilty man.
+
+"What is the next question?" he stammered, eager to answer it in a
+manner calculated to allay her suspicions.
+
+"The next question?" She glanced at the list, then with a voice of
+velvet which belied the eyes, clear as frosty brown pools in November:
+"The next question requires a description of her feet."
+
+"Feet! Oh---they--they're rather large--why, her feet are enormous, I
+believe--"
+
+She looked at him as though stunned; suddenly a flood of pink spread,
+wave on wave, from the white nape of her neck to her hair; she bent low
+over her pad and wrote something, remaining in that attitude until her
+face cooled.
+
+"Somehow or other I've done it again!" he thought, horrified. "The best
+thing I can do is to end it and go home."
+
+In his distress he began to hedge, saying: "Of course, she is rather
+tall and her feet are in some sort of proportion--in fact, they are
+perfectly symmetrical feet--"
+
+Never in his life had he encountered a pair of such angrily beautiful
+eyes. Speech stopped with a dry gulp.
+
+"We now come to 'General Remarks,'" she said in a voice made absolutely
+steady and emotionless. "Have you any remarks of that description to
+offer, Mr. Gatewood?"
+
+"I'm willing to make remarks," he said, "if I only knew what you wished
+me to say."
+
+She mused, eyes on the sunny window, then looked up. "Where did you last
+see her?"
+
+"Near Fifth Avenue."
+
+"And what street?"
+
+He named the street.
+
+"Near _here_?"
+
+"Rather," he said timidly.
+
+She ruffled the edges of her pad, wrote something and erased it, bit her
+scarlet upper lip, and frowned.
+
+"Out of doors, of course?"
+
+"No; indoors," he admitted furtively.
+
+She looked up with a movement almost nervous.
+
+"Do you dare--I mean, care--to be more concise?"
+
+"I would rather not," he replied in a voice from which he hoped he had
+expelled the tremors of alarm.
+
+"As you please, Mr. Gatewood. And would you care to answer any of these
+other questions: Who and what are or were her parents? Give all
+particulars concerning all her relatives. Is she employed or not? What
+are her social, financial, and general circumstances? Her character,
+personal traits, aims, interests, desires? Has she any vices? Any
+virtues? Talents? Ambitions? Caprices? Fads? Are you in love with her?
+Is--"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am."
+
+"Is she in love with you?"
+
+"No; she hates me--I'm afraid."
+
+"Is she in love with anybody?"
+
+"That is a very difficult--"
+
+The girl wrote: "He doesn't know," with a satisfaction apparently
+causeless.
+
+"Is she a relative of yours, Mr. Gatewood?" very sweetly.
+
+"No, Miss Southerland," very positively.
+
+"You--you desire to marry her--you say?"
+
+"I do. But I didn't say it."
+
+She was silent; then:
+
+"What is her name?" in a low voice which started several agreeable
+thrills chasing one another over him.
+
+"I--I decline to answer," he stammered.
+
+"On what grounds, Mr. Gatewood?"
+
+He looked her full in the eyes; suddenly he bent forward and gazed at
+the printed paper from which she had been apparently reading.
+
+"Why, all those questions you are scaring me with are not there!" he
+exclaimed indignantly. "You are making them up?"
+
+"I--I know, but"--she was flushing furiously--"but they are on the other
+forms--some of them. Can't you see you are answering 'Form K'? That is a
+special form--"
+
+"But why do you ask me questions that are _not_ on Form K?"
+
+"Because it is my duty to do all I can to secure evidence which may lead
+to the discovery of the person you desire to find. I--I assure you, Mr,
+Gatewood, this duty is not--not always agreeable--and some people make
+it harder still."
+
+Gatewood looked out of the window. Various emotions---among them shame,
+mortification, chagrin--pervaded him, and chased each other along his
+nervous system, coloring his neck and ears a fiery red for the
+enlightenment of any observer.
+
+"I--I did not mean to offend you," said the girl in a low voice--such a
+gently regretful voice that Gatewood swung around in his chair.
+
+"There is nothing I would not be glad to tell you about the woman I have
+fallen in love with," he said. "She is overwhelmingly lovely; and--when
+I dare--I will tell you her name and where I first saw her--and where I
+saw her last--if you desire. Shall I?"
+
+"It would be advisable. When will you do this?"
+
+"When I dare."
+
+"You--you don't dare--now?"
+
+"No . . . not now."
+
+She absently wrote on her pad: "He doesn't dare tell me now." Then, with
+head still bent, she lifted her mischief-making, trouble-breeding brown
+eyes to his once more.
+
+"I am to come here, of course, to consult you?" he asked dizzily.
+
+"Mr. Keen will receive you--"
+
+"He may be busy."
+
+"He may be," she repeated dreamily.
+
+"So--I'll ask for you."
+
+"We _could_ write you, Mr. Gatewood."
+
+He said hastily: "It's no trouble for me to come; I walk every
+morning."
+
+"But there would be no use, I think, in your coming very soon. All
+I--all Mr. Keen could do for a while would be to report progress--"
+
+"That is all I dare look for: progress--for the present."
+
+During the time that he remained--which was not very long--neither of
+them spoke until he arose to take his departure.
+
+"Good-by, Miss Southerland. I hope you may find the person I have been
+searching for."
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Gatewood. . . . I hope we shall; . . . but
+I--don't--know."
+
+And, as a matter of fact, she did not know; she was rather excited over
+nothing, apparently; and also somewhat preoccupied with several rather
+disturbing emotions the species of which she was interested in
+determining. But to label and catalogue each of these emotions
+separately required privacy and leisure to think--and she also wished to
+look very earnestly at the reflection of her own face in the mirror of
+her own chamber. For it is a trifle exciting--though but an innocent
+coincidence--to be compared, feature by feature, to a young man's ideal.
+As far as that went, she excelled it, too; and, as she stood by the
+desk, alone, gathering up her notes, she suddenly bent over and lifted
+the hem of her gown a trifle--sufficient to reassure herself that the
+dainty pair of shoes she wore, would have baffled the efforts of any
+Venus ever sculptured. And she was perfectly right.
+
+"Of course," she thought to herself, "his ideal runaway hasn't enormous
+feet. He, too, must have been struck with the similarity between me and
+his ideal, and when he realized that I also noticed it, he was
+frightened by my frown into saying that her feet were enormous. How
+silly! . . . For I didn't _mean_ to frighten him. . . . He frightened
+me--once or twice--I mean he irritated me--no, interested me, is what I
+_do_ mean. . . . Heigho! I wonder why she ran away? I wonder why he
+can't find her? . . . It's--it's silly to run away from a man like that.
+. . . Heigho! . . . She doesn't deserve to be found. There is nothing to
+be afraid of--nothing to alarm anybody in a man like that."
+
+So she gathered up her notes and walked slowly out and across to the
+private office of the Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+"Come in," said the Tracer when she knocked. He was using the telephone;
+she seated herself rather listlessly beside the window, where spring
+sunshine lay in gilded patches on the rug and spring breezes stirred
+the curtains. She was a little tired, but there seemed to be no good
+reason why. Yet, with the soft wind blowing on her cheek, the languor
+grew; she rested her face on one closed hand, shutting her eyes.
+
+When they opened again it was to meet the fixed gaze of Mr. Keen.
+
+"Oh--I beg your pardon!"
+
+"There is no need of it, child. Be seated. Never mind that report just
+now." He paced the length of the room once or twice, hands clasped
+behind him; then, halting to confront her:
+
+"What sort of a man is this young Gatewood?"
+
+"What _sort_, Mr. Keen? Why--I think he is the--the sort--that--"
+
+"I see that you don't think much of him," said Keen, laughing.
+
+"Oh, indeed I did not mean that at all; I mean that he appeared to
+be--to be--"
+
+"Rather a cad?"
+
+"Why, _no_!" she said, flushing up. "He is absolutely well-bred, Mr.
+Keen."
+
+"You received no unpleasant impression of him?"
+
+"On the contrary!" she said rather warmly--for it hurt her sense of
+justice that Keen should so misjudge even a stranger in whom she had no
+personal interest.
+
+"You think he looks like an honest man?"
+
+"Honest?" She was rosy with annoyance. "Have you any idea that he is
+dishonest?"
+
+"Have you?"
+
+"Not the slightest," she said with emphasis.
+
+"Suppose a man should set us hunting for a person who does not exist--on
+our terms, which are no payment unless successful? Would that be
+honest?" asked Keen gravely.
+
+"Did--did _he_ do that?"
+
+"No, child."
+
+"I knew he _couldn't_ do such a thing!"
+
+"No, he--er--couldn't, because I wouldn't allow it--not that he tried
+to!" added Keen hastily as the indignant brown eyes sparkled ominously.
+"Really, Miss Southerland, he must be all you say he is, for he has a
+stanch champion to vouch for him."
+
+"All I _say_ he is? I haven't said anything about him!"
+
+Mr. Keen nodded. "_Ex_actly. Let us drop him for a moment. . . . Are you
+perfectly well, Miss Southerland?"
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"I'm glad of it. You are a trifle pale; you seem to be a little
+languid. . . . When do you take your vacation?"
+
+"You suggested May, I believe," she said wistfully.
+
+The Tracer leaned back in his chair, joining the tips of his fingers
+reflectively.
+
+"Miss Southerland," he said, "you have been with us a year. I thought it
+might interest you to know that I am exceedingly pleased with you."
+
+She colored charmingly.
+
+"But," he added, "I'm terribly afraid we're going to lose you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, startled.
+
+"However," he continued, ignoring her half-frightened question with a
+smile, "I am going to promote you--for faithful and efficient service."
+
+"O-h!"
+
+"With an agreeable increase of salary, and new duties which will take
+you into the open air. . . . You ride?"
+
+"I--I used to before----"
+
+"_Ex_actly; before you were obliged to earn your living. Please have
+yourself measured for habit and boots this afternoon. I shall arrange
+for horse, saddle, and groom. You will spend most of your time riding
+in the Park--for the present."
+
+"But--Mr. Keen--am I to be one of your agents--a sort of detective?"
+
+Keen regarded her absently, then crossed one leg over the other.
+
+"Read me your notes," he said with a smile.
+
+She read them, folded them, and he took them from her, thoughtfully
+regarding her.
+
+"Did you know that your mother and I were children together?" he asked.
+
+"No!" She stared. "Is _that_ why you sent for me that day at the school
+of stenography?"
+
+"That is why . . . When I learned that my playmate--your mother--was
+dead, is it not reasonable to suppose that I should wish her daughter to
+have a chance?"
+
+Miss Southerland looked at him steadily.
+
+"She was like you--when she married . . . I never married . . . Do you
+wonder that I sent for you, child?"
+
+Nothing but the clock ticking there in the sunny room, and an old man
+staring into two dimmed brown eyes, and the little breezes at the open
+window whispering of summers past.
+
+"This young man, Gatewood," said the Tracer, clearing his voice of its
+hoarseness--"this young man ought to be all right, if I did not
+misjudge his father--years ago, child, years ago. And he _is_ all
+right--" He half turned toward a big letter-file; "his record is clean,
+so far. The trouble with him is idleness. He ought to marry."
+
+"Isn't he trying to?" she asked.
+
+"It looks like it. Miss Southerland, we _must_ find this woman!"
+
+"Yes, but I don't see how you are going to--on such slight
+information--"
+
+"Information! Child, I have all I want--all I could desire." He laughed,
+passing his hands over his gray hair. "We are going to find the girl he
+is in love with before the week ends!"
+
+"Do you really think so?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. But you must do a great deal in this case."
+
+"I?"
+
+"_Ex_actly."
+
+"And--and what am I to do?"
+
+"Ride in the Park, child! And if you see Mr. Gatewood, don't you dare
+take your eyes off him for one moment. Watch him; observe everything he
+does. If he should recognize you and speak to you, be as amiable to him
+as though it were not by my orders."
+
+"Then--then I _am_ to be a detective!" she faltered.
+
+The Tracer did not appear to hear her. He took up the notes, turned to
+the telephone, and began to send out a general alarm, reading the
+description of the person whom Gatewood had described. The vast,
+intricate and delicate machinery under his control was being set in
+motion all over the Union.
+
+"Not that I expect to find her outside the borough of Manhattan," he
+said, smiling, as he hung up the receiver and turned to her; "but it's
+as well to know how many types of that species exist in this Republic,
+and who they are--in case any other young man comes here raving of brown
+eyes and 'gleams' in the hair."
+
+Miss Southerland, to her own intense consternation, blushed.
+
+"I think you had better order that habit at once," said the Tracer
+carelessly.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Keen," she asked tremulously, "am I to spy upon Mr.
+Gatewood? And report to you? . . . For I simply cannot bear to do it--"
+
+"Child, you need report nothing unless you desire to. And when there is
+something to report, it will be about the woman I am searching for.
+_Don't_ you understand? I have already located her. You will find her
+in the Park. And when you are _sure_ she is the right one--and if you
+care to report it to me--I shall be ready to listen . . . I am always
+ready to listen to you."
+
+"But--I warn you, Mr. Keen, that I have perfect faith in the honor of
+Mr. Gatewood. I _know_ that I could have nothing unworthy to report."
+
+"I am sure of it," said the Tracer of Lost Persons, studying her with
+eyes that were not quite clear. "Now, I think you had better order that
+habit . . . Your mother sat her saddle perfectly . . . We rode very
+often--my lost playmate and I."
+
+He turned, hands clasped behind his back, absently pacing the room,
+backward, forward, there in the spring sunshine. Nor did he notice her
+lingering, nor mark her as she stole from the room, brown eyes saddened
+and thoughtful, wondering, too, that there should be in the world so
+much room for sorrow.
+
+[Illustration: "'I am sure of it,' said the Tracer of Lost Persons."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Gatewood, burdened with restlessness and gnawed by curiosity, consumed a
+week in prowling about the edifice where Keen & Co. carried on an
+interesting profession.
+
+His first visit resulted merely in a brief interview with Mr. Keen, who
+smilingly reported progress and suavely bowed him out. He looked about
+for Miss Southerland as he was leaving, but did not see her.
+
+On his second visit he mustered the adequate courage to ask for her, and
+experienced a curiously sickly sensation when informed that Miss
+Southerland was no longer employed in the bureau of statistics, having
+been promoted to an outside position of great responsibility. His third
+visit proved anything but satisfactory. He sidled and side-stepped for
+ten minutes before he dared ask Mr. Keen _where_ Miss Southerland had
+gone. And when the Tracer replied that, considering the business he had
+undertaken for Mr. Gatewood, he really could not see why Mr. Gatewood
+should interest himself concerning the whereabouts of Miss Southerland,
+the young man had nothing to say, and escaped as soon as possible,
+enraged at himself, at Mr. Keen, and vaguely holding the entire world
+guilty of conspiracy.
+
+He had no definite idea of what he wanted, except that his desire to see
+Miss Southerland again seemed out of all proportion to any reasonable
+motive for seeing her. Occasional fits of disgust with himself for what
+he had done were varied with moody hours of speculation. Suppose Mr.
+Keen did find his ideal? What of it? He no longer wanted to see her. He
+had no use for her. The savor of the enterprise had gone stale in his
+mouth; he was by turns worried, restless, melancholy, sulky, uneasy. A
+vast emptiness pervaded his life. He smoked more and more and ate less
+and less. He even disliked to see others eat, particularly Kerns.
+
+And one exquisite May morning he came down to breakfast and found the
+unspeakable Kerns immersed in grapefruit, calm, well balanced, and
+bland.
+
+"How-de-dee, dear friend?" said that gentleman affably. "Any news from
+Cupid this beautiful May morning?"
+
+"No; and I don't want any," returned Gatewood, sorting his mail with a
+scowl and waving away his fruit.
+
+"Tut, tut! Lovers must be patient. Dearie will be found some day--"
+
+"Some day," snarled Gatewood, "I shall destroy you, Tommy."
+
+"Naughty! Naughty!" reflected Kerns, pensively assaulting the breakfast
+food. "Lovey must _not_ worry; Dovey shall be found, and all will be joy
+and gingerbread. . . . If you throw that orange I'll run screaming to
+the governors. Aren't you ashamed--just because you're in a love
+tantrum!"
+
+"One more word and you get it!"
+
+"May I sing as I trifle with this frugal fare, dear friend? My heart is
+_so_ happy that I should love to warble a few wild notes--"
+
+He paused to watch his badgered victim dispose of a Martini.
+
+"I wonder," he mused, "if you'd like me to tell you what a cocktail
+before breakfast does to the lining of your stomach? Would you?"
+
+"No. I suppose it's what the laundress does to my linen. What do I
+care?"
+
+"_Don't_ be a short sport, Jack."
+
+"Well, I don't care for the game you put me up against. Do you know what
+has happened?"
+
+"I really don't, dear friend. The Tracer of Lost Persons has not found
+her--_has_ he?"
+
+"He says he has," retorted Gatewood sullenly, pulling a crumpled
+telegram from his pocket and casting it upon the table. "I don't want to
+see her; I'm not interested. I never saw but one girl in my life who
+interested me in the slightest; and she's employed to help in this
+ridiculous search."
+
+Kerns, meanwhile, had smoothed out the telegram and was intently
+perusing it:
+
+     "_John Gatewood, Lenox Club, Fifth Avenue:_
+
+     "Person probably discovered. Call here as soon as possible.
+
+     W. KEEN."
+
+"_What_ do you make of that?" demanded Gatewood hoarsely.
+
+"Make of it? Why, it's true enough, I fancy. Go and see, and if it's
+she, be hers!"
+
+"I won't! I don't want to see any ideal! I don't want to marry. Why do
+you try to make me marry somebody?"
+
+"Because it's good for you, dear friend. Otherwise you'll go to the
+doggy-dogs. You don't realize how much worry you are to me."
+
+"Confound it! Why don't _you_ marry? Why didn't I ask you that when you
+put me up to all this foolishness? What right have you to--"
+
+"Tut, friend! _I_ know there's no woman alive fit to wed me and spend
+her life in stealing kisses from me. _I_ have no ideal. _You_ have an
+ideal."
+
+"I haven't!"
+
+"Oh, yes, dear friend, there's a stub in your check book to prove it.
+You simply bet $5,000 that your ideal existed. You've won. Go and be her
+joy and sunshine."
+
+"I'll put an end to this whole business," said Gatewood wrathfully, "and
+I'll do it now!"
+
+"Bet you that you're engaged within the week!" said Kerns with a placid
+smile.
+
+The other swung around savagely: "What will you bet, Tommy? You may have
+what odds you please. I'll make you sit up for this."
+
+"I'll bet you," answered Kerns, deliberately, "an entire silver dinner
+service against a saddle horse for the bride."
+
+"That's a fool bet!" snapped Gatewood. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, if you don't care to--"
+
+"What do I want of a silver service? But, all right; I'll bet you
+anything."
+
+"_She'll_ want it," replied Kerns significantly, booking the bet. "I may
+as well canter out to Tiffany's this morning, I fancy. . . . Where are
+you going, Jack?"
+
+"To see Keen and confess what an ass I've been!" returned Gatewood
+sullenly, striding across the breakfast room to take his hat and gloves
+from the rack. And out he went, mad all over.
+
+On his way up the avenue he attempted to formulate the humiliating
+confession which already he shrank from. But it had to be done. He
+simply could not stand the prospect of being notified month after month
+that a lady would be on view somewhere. It was like going for a fitting;
+it was horrible. Besides, what use was it? Within a week or two an
+enormous and utterly inexplicable emptiness had yawned before him,
+revealing life as a hollow delusion. He no longer cared.
+
+Immersed in bitter reflection, he climbed the familiar stairway and sent
+his card to Mr. Keen, and in due time he was ushered into the presence
+of the Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+"Mr. Keen," he began, with a headlong desire to get it over and be done
+with it, "I may as well tell you how impossible it is for you, or
+anybody, to find that person I described--"
+
+Mr. Keen raised an expostulatory hand, smiling indulgence.
+
+"It is more than possible, Mr. Gatewood, more than probable; it is
+almost an accomplished fact. In other words, I think I may venture to
+congratulate you and say that she _is_ found."
+
+"Now, _how_ can she be found, when there isn't--"
+
+"Mr. Gatewood, the magician will always wave his magic wand for you and
+show you his miracles for the price of admission. But for that price he
+does not show you how he works his miracles," said Keen, laughing.
+
+"But I ought to tell you," persisted Gatewood, "that it is utterly
+impossible you should find the person I wished to discover, because
+she--"
+
+"I can only prove that you are wrong," smiled Keen, rising from his easy
+chair.
+
+"Mr. Keen," said the young man earnestly, "I have been more or less of a
+chump at times. One of those times was when I came here on this errand.
+All I desire, now, is to let the matter rest as it is. I am satisfied,
+and you have lost nothing. Nor have you found anything or anybody. You
+think you have, but you haven't. I do not wish you to continue the
+search, or to send me any further reports. I want to forget the whole
+miserable matter--to be free--to feel myself freed from any obligations
+to that irritating person I asked you to find."
+
+The Tracer regarded him very gravely.
+
+"Is that your wish, Mr. Gatewood? I can scarcely credit it."
+
+"It is. I've been a fool; I simply want to stop being one if anybody
+will permit it."
+
+"And you decline to attempt to identify the very beautiful person we
+have discovered to be the individual for whom you asked us to search?"
+
+"I do. She may be beautiful; but I know well enough she can't compare
+with--some one."
+
+"I am sorry," said Keen thoughtfully. "We take so much pride in these
+matters. When one of my agents discovered where this person was, I was
+rather--happy; for I have taken a peculiar personal interest in your
+case. However--"
+
+"Mr. Keen," said Gatewood, "if you could understand how ashamed and
+mortified I am at my own conduct--"
+
+Keen gazed pensively out of the window. "I also am sorry; Miss
+Southerland was to have received a handsome bonus for her discovery--"
+
+"Miss S-S-S-S-outherland!"
+
+"_Ex_actly; without quite so many _S's_," said Keen, smiling.
+
+"Did _she_ discover that--that person?" exclaimed the young man,
+startled.
+
+"She thinks she has. I am not sure she is correct; but I am absolutely
+certain that Miss Southerland could eventually discover the person you
+were in search of. It seems a little hard on her--just on the eve of
+success--to lose. But that can't be helped now."
+
+Gatewood, more excited and uncomfortable than he had ever been in all
+his life, watched Keen intently.
+
+"Too bad, too bad," muttered the Tracer to himself. "The child needs the
+encouragement. It meant a thousand dollars to her--" He shrugged his
+shoulders, looked up, and, as though rather surprised to see Gatewood
+still there, smiled an impersonal smile and offered his hand in adieu.
+Gatewood winced.
+
+"Could I--I see Miss Southerland?" he asked.
+
+"I am afraid not. She is at this moment following my instructions
+to--but that cannot interest you now--"
+
+"Yes, it does!--if you don't mind. Where is she? I--I'll take a look at
+the person she discovered; I will, really."
+
+"Why, it's only this: I suspected that you might identify a person whom
+I had reason to believe was to be found every morning riding in the
+Park. So Miss Southerland has been riding there every day. Yesterday she
+came here, greatly excited--"
+
+"Yes--yes--go on!"
+
+Keen gazed dreamily at the sunny window. "She thought she had found
+your--er--the person. So I said you would meet her on the bridle path,
+near--but that's of no interest now--"
+
+"Near where?" demanded Gatewood, suppressing inexplicable excitement.
+And as Keen said nothing: "I'll go; I want to go, I really do!
+Can't--can't a fellow change his mind? Oh, I know you think I'm a
+lunatic, and there's plenty of reason, too!"
+
+Keen studied him calmly. "Yes, plenty of reason, plenty of reason, Mr.
+Gatewood. But do you suppose you are the only one? I know another who
+was perfectly sane two weeks ago."
+
+The young man waited impatiently; the Tracer paced the room, gray head
+bent, delicate, wrinkled hands clasped loosely behind his bent back.
+
+"You have horses at the Whip and Spur Club," he said abruptly. "Suppose
+you ride out and see how close Miss Southerland has come to solving our
+problem."
+
+Gatewood seized the offered hand and wrung it with a fervor out of all
+reason; and it is curious that the Tracer of Lost Persons did not appear
+to be astonished.
+
+"You're rather impetuous--like your father," he said slowly. "I knew
+him; so I've ventured to trust his son--even when I heard how aimlessly
+he was living his life. Mr. Gatewood! May I ask you something--as an old
+friend of your father?"
+
+The young man nodded, subdued, perplexed, scarcely understanding.
+
+"It's only this: If you _do_ find the woman you could love--in the
+Park--to-day--come back to me some day and let me tell you all those
+foolish, trite, tiresome things that I should have told a son of mine. I
+am so old that you will not take offense--you will not mind listening to
+me, or forgetting the dull, prosy things I say about the curse of
+idleness, and the habits of cynical thinking, and the perils of
+vacant-minded indulgence. You will forgive me--and you will forget me.
+That will be as it should be. Good-by."
+
+Gatewood, sobered, surprised, descended the stairs and hailed a hansom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+All the way to the Whip and Spur Club he sat buried in a reverie from
+which, at intervals, he started, aroused by the heavy, expectant beating
+of his own pulses. But what did he expect, in Heaven's name? Not the
+discovery of a woman who had never existed. Yet his excitement and
+impatience grew as he watched the saddling of his horse; and when at
+length he rode out into the sunshine and cantered through the Park
+entrance, his sense of impending events and his expectancy amounted to a
+fever which colored his face attractively.
+
+He saw her almost immediately. Her horse was walking slowly in the
+dappled shadows of the new foliage; she, listless in her saddle,
+sometimes watching the throngs of riders passing, at moments turning to
+gaze into the woodland vistas where, over the thickets of flowering
+shrubbery, orioles and robins sped flashing on tinted wings from shadow
+to sun, from sun to shadow. But she looked up as he drew bridle and
+wheeled his mount beside her; and, "Oh!" she said, flushing in
+recognition.
+
+"I have missed you terribly," he said quietly.
+
+It was dreamy weather, even for late spring: the scent of lilacs and
+mock-orange hung heavy as incense along the woods. Their voices
+unconsciously found the key to harmonize with it all.
+
+She said: "Well, I think I have succeeded. In a few moments she will be
+passing. I do not know her name; she rides a big roan. She is very
+beautiful, Mr. Gatewood."
+
+He said: "I am perfectly certain we shall find her. I doubted it until
+now. But now I know."
+
+"Oh-h, but I _may_ be wrong," she protested.
+
+"No; you cannot be."
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"You can have no idea how happy you make me," he said unsteadily.
+
+"But--I--but I may be all wrong--dreadfully wrong!"
+
+"Y-es; you may be, but I shall not be. For do you know that I have
+already seen her in the Park?"
+
+"When?" she demanded incredulously, then turned in the saddle,
+repeating: "Where? Did she pass? How perfectly stupid of me! And _was_
+she the--the right one?"
+
+"She _is_ the right one. . . . Don't turn: I have seen her. Ride on: I
+want to say something--if I can."
+
+"No, no," she insisted. "I must know whether I was right--"
+
+"You _are_ right--but you don't know it yet. . . . Oh, very well, then;
+we'll turn if you insist." And he wheeled his mount as she did, riding
+at her bridle again.
+
+"How can you take it so coolly--so indifferently?" she said. "Where has
+that woman--where has she gone? . . . Never mind; she must turn and pass
+us sooner or later, for she lives uptown. _What_ are you laughing at,
+Mr. Gatewood?"--in annoyed surprise.
+
+"I am laughing at myself. Oh, I'm so many kinds of a fool--you can't
+think how many, and it's no use!"
+
+She stared, astonished; he shook his head.
+
+"No, you don't understand yet. But you will. Listen to me: this very
+beautiful lady you have discovered is nothing to me!"
+
+"Nothing--to you!" she faltered. Two pink spots of indignation burned in
+her cheeks. "How--how dare you say that!--after all that has been
+done--all that you have said. You said you loved her; you _did_ say
+so--to _me_!"
+
+"I don't love her now."
+
+"But you did!" Tears of pure vexation started; she faced him, eye to
+eye, thoroughly incensed.
+
+"What sort of man are you?" she said under her breath. "Your friend Mr.
+Kerns is wrong. You are not worth saving from yourself."
+
+"Kerns!" he repeated, angry and amazed. "What the deuce has Kerns to do
+with this affair?"
+
+She stared, then, realizing her indiscretion, bit her lip, and spurred
+forward. But he put his horse to a gallop, and they pounded along in
+silence. In a little while she drew bridle and looked around coldly,
+grave with displeasure.
+
+"Mr. Kerns came to us before you did. He said you would probably come,
+and he begged us to strain every effort in your behalf, because, he
+said, your happiness absolutely depended upon our finding for you the
+woman you were seeking. . . . And I tried--very hard--and now she's
+found. You admit that--and _now_ you say--"
+
+"I say that one of these balmy summer days I'll assassinate Tommy
+Kerns!" broke in Gatewood. "What on earth possessed that prince of
+butters-in to go to Mr. Keen?"
+
+"To save you from yourself!" retorted the girl in a low, exasperated
+voice. "He did not say what threatened you; he is a good friend for a
+man to have. But we soon found out what you were--a man well born, well
+bred, full of brilliant possibility, who was slowly becoming an idle,
+cynical, self-centered egoist--a man who, lacking the lash of need or
+the spur of ambition, was degenerating through the sheer uselessness and
+inanity of his life. And, oh, the pity of it! For Mr. Keen and I have
+taken a--a curiously personal interest in you--in your case. I say, the
+pity of it!"
+
+Astounded, dumb under her stinging words, he rode beside her through the
+brilliant sunshine, wheeled mechanically as she turned her horse, and
+rode north again.
+
+"And now--_now_!" she said passionately, "you turn on the woman you
+loved! Oh, you are not worth it!"
+
+"You are quite right," he said, turning very white under her scorn.
+"Almost all you have said is true enough, I fancy. I amount to nothing;
+I am idle, cynical, selfish. The emptiness of such a life requires a
+stimulant; even a fool abhors a vacuum. So I drink--not so very much
+yet--but more than I realize. And it is close enough to a habit to worry
+me. . . . Yes, almost all you say is true; Kerns knows it; I know
+it--now that you have told me. You see, he couldn't tell me, because I
+should not have believed him. But I believe you--all you say, except one
+thing. And that is only a glimmer of decency left in me--not that I make
+any merit of it. No, it is merely instinctive. For I have _not_ turned
+on the woman I loved."
+
+Her face was pale as her level eyes met him:
+
+"You said she was nothing to you. . . . Look there! Do you see her? Do
+you see?"
+
+Her voice broke nervously as he swung around to stare at a rider bearing
+down at a gallop--a woman on a big roan, tearing along through the
+spring sunshine, passing them with wind-flushed cheeks and dark,
+incurious eyes, while her powerful horse carried her on, away through
+the quivering light and shadow of the woodland vista.
+
+"Is _that_ the person?"
+
+"Y-es," she faltered. "Was I wrong?"
+
+"Quite wrong, Miss Southerland."
+
+"But--but you said you had seen her here this morning!"
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+"Did you speak to her before you met me?"
+
+"No--not before I met you."
+
+"Then you have not spoken to her. Is she still here in the Park?"
+
+"Yes, she is still here."
+
+The girl turned on him excitedly: "Do you mean to say that you will not
+speak to her?"
+
+"I had rather not--"
+
+"And your happiness depends on your speaking?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it is cowardly not to speak."
+
+"Oh, yes, it is cowardly. . . . If you wish me to speak to her I will.
+Shall I?"
+
+"Yes . . . Show her to me."
+
+"And you think that such a man as I am has a right to speak of love to
+her?"
+
+"I--we believe it will be your salvation. Mr. Kerns says you must marry
+her to be happy. Mr. Keen told me yesterday that it only needed a word
+from the right woman to put you on your mettle. . . . And--and that is
+my opinion."
+
+"Then in charity say that word!" he breathed, bending toward her. "Can't
+you see? Can't you understand? Don't you know that from the moment I
+looked into your eyes I loved you?"
+
+"How--how dare you!" she stammered, crimsoning.
+
+"God knows," he said wistfully. "I am a coward. I don't know how I
+dared. Good-by. . . ."
+
+He walked his horse a little way, then launched him into a gallop,
+tearing on and on, sun, wind, trees swimming, whirling like a vision,
+hearing nothing, feeling nothing, save the leaden pounding of his pulse
+and the breathless, terrible tightening in his throat.
+
+When he cleared his eyes and looked around he was quite alone, his horse
+walking under the trees and breathing heavily.
+
+At first he laughed, and the laugh was not pleasant. Then he said aloud:
+"It is worth having lived for, after all!"--and was silent. And again:
+"I could expect nothing; she was perfectly right to side-step a fool.
+. . . And _such_ a fool!"
+
+The distant gallop of a horse, dulled on the soft soil, but coming
+nearer, could not arouse him from the bitter depths he had sunk in; not
+even when the sound ceased beside him, and horse snorted recognition to
+horse. It was only when a light touch rested on his arm that he looked
+up heavily, caught his breath.
+
+"Where is the other--woman?" she gasped.
+
+"There never was any other."
+
+"You said--"
+
+"I said I loved my ideal. I did not know she existed--until I saw you."
+
+"Then--then we were searching for--"
+
+"A vision. But it was your face that haunted me. . . . And I am not
+worth it, as you say. And I know it, . . . for you have opened my eyes."
+
+He drew bridle, forcing a laugh. "I cut a sorry figure in your life; be
+patient; I am going out of it now." And he swung his horse. At the same
+moment she did the same, making a demi-tour and meeting him halfway,
+confronting him.
+
+"Do you--you mean to ride out of my life without a word?" she asked
+unsteadily.
+
+"Good-by." He offered his hand, stirring his horse forward; she leaned
+lightly over and laid both hands in his. Then, her face surging in
+color, she lifted her beautiful dark eyes to his as the horses
+approached, nearer, nearer, until, as they passed, flank brushing flank,
+her eyes fell, then closed as she swayed toward him, and clung, her
+young lips crushed to his.
+
+There was nobody to witness it except the birds and squirrels--nobody
+but a distant mounted policeman, who almost fainted away in his saddle.
+
+Oh, it was awful, awful! Apparently she had been kissed speechless, for
+she said nothing. The man fool did all the talking, incoherently enough,
+but evidently satisfactory to her, judging from the way she looked at
+him, and blushed and blushed, and touched her eyes with a bit of cambric
+at intervals.
+
+All the policeman heard as they passed him was; "I'm going to give you
+this horse, and Kerns is to give us our silver; and what do you think,
+my darling?"
+
+"W-what?"
+
+But they had already passed out of earshot; and in a few moments the
+shady, sun-flecked bridle path was deserted again save for the birds and
+squirrels, and a single mounted policeman, rigid, wild eyed, twisting
+his mustache and breathing hard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The news of Gatewood's fate filled Kerns with a pleasure bordering upon
+melancholy. It was his work; he had done it; it was good for Gatewood
+too--time for him to stop his irresponsible cruise through life, lower
+sail, heave to, set his signals, and turn over matters to this charming
+pilot.
+
+And now they would come into port together and anchor somewhere east of
+Fifth Avenue--which, Kerns reflected, was far more proper a place for
+Gatewood than somewhere east of Suez, where young men so often sail.
+
+And yet, and yet there was something melancholy in the pleasure he
+experienced. Gatewood was practically lost to him. He knew what might be
+expected from engaged men and newly married men. Gatewood's club life
+was ended--for a while; and there was no other man with whom he cared to
+embark for those brightly lighted harbors twinkling east of Suez across
+the metropolitan wastes.
+
+"It's very generous of me to get him married," he said frequently to
+himself, rather sadly. "I did it pretty well, too. It only shows that
+women have no particular monopoly in the realms of diplomacy and
+finesse; in fact, if a man really chooses to put his mind to such
+matters, he can make it no trumps and win out behind a bum ace and a
+guarded knave."
+
+He was pleased with himself. He followed Gatewood about explaining how
+good he had been to him. An enthusiasm for marrying off his friends
+began to germinate within him; he tried it on Darrell, on Barnes, on
+Yates, but was turned down and severely stung.
+
+Then one day Harren of the Philippine Scouts turned up at the club, and
+they held a determined reunion until daylight, and they told each other
+all about it all and what upper-cuts life had handed out to them since
+the troopship sailed.
+
+And after the rosy glow had deepened to a more gorgeous hue in the room,
+and the electric lights had turned into silver pinwheels; and after they
+had told each other the story of their lives, and the last siphon fizzed
+impotently when urged beyond its capacity, Kerns arose and extended his
+hand, and Harren took it. And they executed a song resembling "Auld Lang
+Syne."
+
+"Ole man," said Kerns reproachfully, "there's one thing you have been
+deuced careful _not_ to mention, and that is about what happened to you
+three years ago--"
+
+"Steady!" said Harren; "there is nothing to tell, Tommy."
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing. I never saw her again. I never shall."
+
+Kerns looked long and unsteadily upon his friend; then very gravely
+fumbled in his pocket and drew forth the business card of Westrel Keen,
+Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+"That," he said, "will be about all." And he bestowed the card upon
+Harren with magnificent condescension.
+
+And about five o'clock the following afternoon Harren found the card
+among various effects of his, scattered over his dresser.
+
+It took him several days to make up his mind to pay any attention to the
+card or the suggestion it contained. He scarcely considered it seriously
+even when, passing along Fifth Avenue one sunny afternoon, he chanced to
+glance up and see the sign
+
+                        KEEN & CO.
+                  TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
+
+staring him in the face.
+
+He continued his stroll, but that evening, upon mere impulse, he sat
+down and wrote a letter to Mr. Keen.
+
+The next morning's mail brought a reply and an appointment for an
+interview on Wednesday week. Harren tossed the letter aside, satisfied
+to let the matter go, because his leave expired on Tuesday, and the
+appointment was impossible.
+
+On Sunday, however, the melancholy of the deserted club affected his
+spirits. A curious desire to see this Tracer of Lost Persons seized him
+with a persistence unaccountable. He slept poorly, haunted with visions.
+
+On Monday he went to see Mr. Keen. It could do no harm; it was too late
+to do either harm or good, for his leave expired the next day at noon.
+
+The business of Keen & Co., Tracers of Lost Persons, had grown to
+enormous proportions; appointments for a personal interview with Mr.
+Keen were now made a week in advance, so when young Harren sent in his
+card, the gayly liveried negro servant came back presently, threading
+his way through the waiting throng with pomp and circumstance, and
+returned the card to Harren with the date of appointment rewritten in
+ink across the top. The day named was Wednesday. On Tuesday Harren's
+leave expired.
+
+"That won't do," said the young man brusquely; "I must see Mr. Keen
+to-day. I wrote last week for an appointment."
+
+The liveried darky was polite but obdurate.
+
+"Dis here am de 'pintment, suh," he explained persuasively.
+
+"But I want to see Mr. Keen at once," insisted Harren.
+
+"Hit ain't no use, suh," said the darky respectfully; "dey's mi'ions an'
+mi'ions ob gemmen jess a-settin' roun' an' waitin' foh Mistuh Keen. In
+dis here perfeshion, suh, de fustest gemman dat has a 'pintment is de
+fustest gemman dat kin see Mistuh Keen. You is a military gemman
+yohse'f, Cap'm Harren, an' you is aware dat precedence am de rigger."
+
+The bronzed young man smiled, glanced at the date of appointment written
+on his card, which also bore his own name followed by the letters
+U.S.A., then his amused gray eyes darkened and he glanced leisurely
+around the room, where a dozen or more assorted people sat waiting their
+turns to interview Mr. Keen: all sorts and conditions of people--smartly
+gowned women, an anxious-browed business man or two, a fat German truck
+driver, his greasy cap on his knees, a surly policeman, and an old
+Irishwoman, wearing a shawl and an ancient straw bonnet. Harren's eyes
+reverted to the darky.
+
+"You will explain to Mr. Keen," he said, "that I am an army officer on
+leave, and that I am obliged to start for Manila to-morrow. This is my
+excuse for asking an immediate interview; and if it's not a good enough
+excuse I must cancel this appointment, that is all."
+
+The darky stood, irresolute, inclined to argue, but something in the
+steel-gray eyes of the man set him in involuntary motion, and he went
+away once more with the young man's message. Harren turned and walked
+back to his seat. The old woman with the faded shawl was explaining
+volubly to a handsomely gowned woman beside her that she was looking for
+her boy, Danny; that her name was Mrs. Regan, and that she washed for
+the aristocracy of Hunter's Point at a liberal price per dozen, using no
+deleterious substances in the suds as Heaven was her witness.
+
+The German truck driver, moved by this confidence, was stirred to begin
+an endless account of his domestic misfortunes, and old Mrs. Regan,
+becoming impatient, had already begun to interrupt with an account of
+Regan's recent hoisting on the wings of a premature petard, when the
+dark servant reappeared.
+
+"Mistuh Keen will receive you, suh," he whispered, leading the way into
+a large room where dozens of attractive young girls sat very busily
+engaged at typewriting machines. Door after door they passed, all
+numbered on the ground-glass panes, then swung to the right, where the
+darky bowed him into a big, handsomely furnished room flooded with the
+morning sun. A tall, gray man, faultlessly dressed in a gray frock suit
+and wearing white spats, turned from the breezy, open window to inspect
+him; the lean, well groomed, rather lank type of gentleman suggesting a
+retired colonel of cavalry; unmistakably well bred from the ends of his
+drooping gray mustache to the last button on his immaculate spats.
+
+"Captain Harren?" he said pleasantly.
+
+"Mr. Keen?"
+
+They bowed. Young Harren drew from his pocket a card. It was the
+business card of Keen & Co., and, glancing up at Mr. Keen, he read it
+aloud, carefully:
+
+     KEEN & CO.
+
+     TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
+
+     Keen & Co. are prepared to locate the whereabouts of anybody on
+     earth. No charges will be made unless the person searched for is
+     found.
+
+     _Blanks on Application._
+
+     WESTREL KEEN, Manager.
+
+Harren raised his clear, gray eyes. "I assume this statement to be
+correct, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"You may safely assume so," said Mr. Keen, smiling.
+
+"Does this statement include _all_ that you are prepared to undertake?"
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons inspected him coolly. "What more is there,
+Captain Harren? I undertake to find lost people. I even undertake to
+find the undiscovered ideals of young people who have failed to meet
+them. What further field would you suggest?" Harren glanced at the card
+which he held in his gloved hand; then, very slowly, he re-read, "the
+whereabouts of anybody _on earth_," accenting the last two words
+deliberately as he encountered Keen's piercing gaze again.
+
+"Well?" asked Mr. Keen laughingly, "is not that sufficient? Our clients
+could scarcely expect us to invade heaven in our search for the
+vanished."
+
+"There are other regions," said Harren.
+
+"_Ex_actly. Sit down, sir. There is a row of bookcases for your
+amusement. Please help yourself while I clear decks for action."
+
+Harren stood fingering the card, his gray eyes lost in retrospection;
+then he sauntered over to the bookcases, scanning the titles. The
+Searcher for Lost Persons studied him for a moment or two, turned, and
+began to pace the room. After a moment or two he touched a bell. A
+sweet-faced young girl entered; she was gowned in black and wore a white
+collar, and cuffs turned back over her hands.
+
+"Take this memorandum," he said. The girl picked up a pencil and pad,
+and Mr. Keen, still pacing the room, dictated in a quiet voice as he
+walked to and fro:
+
+"Mrs. Regan's Danny is doing six months in Butte, Montana. Break it to
+her as mercifully as possible. He is a bad one. We make no charge. The
+truck driver, Becker, can find his wife at her mother's house, Leonia,
+New Jersey. Tell him to be less pig-headed or she'll go for good some
+day. Ten dollars. Mrs. M., No. 36001, can find her missing butler in
+service at 79 Vine Street, Hartford, Connecticut. She may notify the
+police whenever she wishes. His portrait is No. 170529, Rogues' Gallery.
+Five hundred dollars. Miss K. (No. 3679) may send her letter, care of
+Cisneros & Co., Rio, where the person she is seeking has gone into the
+coffee business. If she decides that she really does love him, he'll
+come back fast enough. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Mr. W. (No. 3620)
+must go to the morgue for further information. His repentance is too
+late; but he can see that there is a decent burial. The charge: one
+thousand dollars to the Florence Mission. You may add that we possess
+his full record."
+
+The Tracer paused and waited for the stenographer to finish. When she
+looked up: "Who else is waiting?" he asked.
+
+The girl read over the initials and numbers.
+
+"Tell that policeman that Kid Conroy sails on the _Carania_ to-morrow.
+Fifty dollars. There is nothing definite in the other cases. Report
+progress and send out a general alarm for the cashier inquired for by
+No. 3608. You will find details in vol. xxxix under B."
+
+"Is that all, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"Yes. I'm going to be very busy with"--turning slowly toward
+Harren--"with Captain Harren, of the Philippine Scouts, until
+to-morrow--a very complicated case, Miss Borrow, involving cipher codes
+and photography--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Harren started, then walked slowly to the center of the room as the
+pretty stenographer passed out with a curious level glance at him.
+
+"Why do you say that photography plays a part in my case?" he asked.
+
+"Doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes. But how--"
+
+"Oh, I only guessed it," said Keen with a smile. "I made another guess
+that your case involved a cipher code. Does it?"
+
+"Y-es," said the young man, astonished, "but I don't see--"
+
+"It also involves the occult," observed Keen calmly. "We may need Miss
+Borrow to help us."
+
+Almost staggered, Harren stared at the Tracer out of his astonished gray
+eyes until that gentleman laughed outright and seated himself, motioning
+Harren to do likewise.
+
+"Don't be surprised, Captain Harren," he said. "I suppose you have no
+conception of our business, no realization of its scope--its network of
+information bureaus all over the civilized world, its myriad sources of
+information, the immensity of its delicate machinery, the endless data
+and the infinitesimal details we have at our command. You, of course,
+have no idea of the number of people of every sort and condition who are
+in our employ, of the ceaseless yet inoffensive surveillance we
+maintain. For example, when your letter came last week I called up the
+person who has charge of the army list. There you were, Kenneth Harren,
+Captain Philippine Scouts, with the date of your graduation from West
+Point. Then I called up a certain department devoted to personal detail,
+and in five minutes I knew your entire history. I then touched another
+electric button, and in a minute I had before me the date of your
+arrival in New York, your present address, and"--he looked up
+quizzically at Harren--"and several items of general information, such
+as your peculiar use of your camera, and the list of books on Psychical
+Phenomena and Cryptograms which you have been buying--"
+
+Harren flushed up. "Do you mean to say that I have been spied upon, Mr.
+Keen?"
+
+"No more than anybody else who comes to us as a client. There was
+nothing offensive in the surveillance." He shrugged his shoulders and
+made a deprecating gesture. "Ours is a business, my dear sir, like any
+other. We, of course, are obliged to know about people who call on us.
+Last week you wrote me, and I immediately set every wheel in motion; in
+other words, I had you under observation from the day I received your
+letter to this very moment."
+
+"You learned much concerning me?" asked Harren quietly.
+
+"_Ex_actly, my dear sir."
+
+"But," continued Harren with a touch of malice, "you didn't learn that
+my leave is up to-morrow, did you?"
+
+"Yes, I learned that, too."
+
+"Then why did you give me an appointment for the day after to-morrow?"
+demanded the young man bluntly.
+
+The Tracer looked him squarely in the eye. "Your leave is to be
+extended," he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"_Ex_actly. It has been extended one week."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"You applied for extension, did you not?"
+
+"Yes," said Harren, turning red, "but I don't see how you knew that I--"
+
+"By cable?"
+
+"Y-yes."
+
+"There's a cablegram in your rooms at this very moment," said the
+Tracer carelessly. "You have the extension you desired. And now, Captain
+Harren," with a singularly pleasant smile, "what can I do to help you to
+a pursuit of that true happiness which is guaranteed for all good
+citizens under our Constitution?"
+
+Captain Harren crossed his long legs, dropping one knee over the other,
+and deliberately surveyed his interrogator.
+
+"I really have no right to come to you," he said slowly. "Your
+prospectus distinctly states that Keen & Co. undertake to find _live_
+people, and I don't know whether the person I am seeking is alive
+or--or--"
+
+His steady voice faltered; the Tracer watched him curiously.
+
+"Of course, that is important," he said. "If she _is_ dead--"
+
+"_She_!"
+
+"Didn't you say 'she,' Captain?"
+
+"No, I did not."
+
+"I beg your pardon, then, for anticipating you," said the Tracer
+carelessly.
+
+"Anticipating? _How_ do you know it is not a man I am in search of?"
+demanded Harren.
+
+"Captain Harren, you are unmarried and have no son; you have no father,
+no brother, no sister. Therefore I infer--several things--for example,
+that you are in love."
+
+"I? In love?"
+
+"Desperately, Captain."
+
+"Your inferences seem to satisfy you, at least," said Harren almost
+sullenly, "but they don't satisfy me--clever as they appear to be."
+
+"_Ex_actly. Then you are _not_ in love?"
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not."
+
+"I do," said the Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+"Then you know more than I," retorted Harren sharply.
+
+"But that is my business--to know more than you do," returned Mr. Keen
+patiently. "Else why are you here to consult me?" And as Harren made no
+reply: "I have seen thousands and thousands of people in love. I have
+reduced the superficial muscular phenomena and facial symptomatic aspect
+of such people to an exact science founded upon a schedule approximating
+the Bertillon system of records. And," he added, smiling, "out of the
+twenty-seven known vocal variations your voice betrays twenty-five
+unmistakable symptoms; and out of the sixteen reflex muscular symptoms
+your face has furnished six, your hands three, your limbs and feet six.
+Then there are other superficial symptoms--"
+
+"Good heavens!" broke in Harren; "how can you prove a man to be in love
+when he himself doesn't know whether he is or not? If a man isn't in
+love no Bertillon system can make him so; and if a man doesn't know
+whether or not he is in love, who can tell him the truth?"
+
+"I can," said the Tracer calmly.
+
+"What! When I tell you I myself don't know?"
+
+"_That_," said the Tracer, smiling, "is the final and convincing
+symptom. _You_ don't know. _I_ know because you _don't_ know. That is
+the easiest way to be sure that you are in love, Captain Harren, because
+you always are when you are not sure. You'd know if you were _not_ in
+love. Now, my dear sir, you may lay your case confidently before me."
+
+Harren, unconvinced, sat frowning and biting his lip and twisting his
+short, crisp mustache which the tropical sun had turned straw color and
+curly.
+
+"I feel like a fool to tell you," he said. "I'm not an imaginative man,
+Mr. Keen; I'm not fanciful, not sentimental. I'm perfectly healthy,
+perfectly normal--a very busy man in my profession, with no time and no
+inclination to fall in love."
+
+"Just the sort of man who does it," commented Keen. "Continue."
+
+Harren fidgeted about in his chair, looked out of the window, squinted
+at the ceiling, then straightened up, folding his arms with sudden
+determination.
+
+"I'd rather be boloed than tell you," he said. "Perhaps, after all, I
+_am_ a lunatic; perhaps I've had a touch of the Luzon sun and don't know
+it."
+
+"I'll be the judge," said the Tracer, smiling.
+
+"Very well, sir. Then I'll begin by telling you that I've seen a ghost."
+
+"There are such things," observed Keen quietly.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean one of those fabled sheeted creatures that float about
+at night; I mean a phantom--a real phantom--in the sunlight--standing
+before my very eyes in broad day! . . . Now do you feel inclined to go
+on with my case, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the Tracer gravely. "Please continue, Captain
+Harren."
+
+"All right, then. Here's the beginning of it: Three years ago, here in
+New York, drifting along Fifth Avenue with the crowd, I looked up to
+encounter the most wonderful pair of eyes that I ever beheld--that any
+living man ever beheld! The most--wonderfully--beautiful--"
+
+He sat so long immersed in retrospection that the Tracer said: "I am
+listening, Captain," and the Captain woke up with a start.
+
+"What was I saying? How far had I proceeded?"
+
+"Only to the eyes."
+
+"Oh, I see! The eyes were dark, sir, dark and lovely beyond any power of
+description. The hair was also dark--very soft and thick and--er--wavy
+and dark. The face was extremely youthful, and ornamental to the
+uttermost verges of a beauty so exquisite that, were I to attempt to
+formulate for you its individual attractions, I should, I fear,
+transgress the strictly rigid bounds of that reticence which becomes a
+gentleman in complete possession of his senses."
+
+"_Ex_actly," mused the Tracer.
+
+"Also," continued Captain Harren, with growing animation, "to attempt to
+describe her figure would be utterly useless, because I am a practical
+man and not a poet, nor do I read poetry or indulge in futile novels or
+romances of any description. Therefore I can only add that it was a
+figure, a poise, absolutely faultless, youthful, beautiful, erect,
+wholesome, gracious, graceful, charmingly buoyant and--well, I cannot
+describe her figure, and I shall not try."
+
+"_Ex_actly; don't try."
+
+"No," said Harren mournfully, "it is useless"; and he relapsed into
+enchanted retrospection.
+
+"Who was she?" asked Mr. Keen softly.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You never again saw her?"
+
+"Mr. Keen, I--I am not ill-bred, but I simply could not help following
+her. She was so b-b-beautiful that it hurt; and I only wanted to look at
+her; I didn't mind being hurt. So I walked on and on, and sometimes I'd
+pass her and sometimes I'd let her pass me, and when she wasn't looking
+I'd look--not offensively, but just because I _couldn't_ help it. And
+all the time my senses were humming like a top and my heart kept jumping
+to get into my throat, and I hadn't a notion where I was going or what
+time it was or what day of the week. She didn't see me; she didn't dream
+that I was looking at her; she didn't know me from any of the thousand
+silk-hatted, frock-coated men who passed and repassed her on Fifth
+Avenue. And when she went into St. Berold's Church, I went, too, and I
+stood where I could see her and where she couldn't see me. It was like a
+touch of the Luzon sun, Mr. Keen. And then she came out and got into a
+Fifth Avenue stage, and I got in, too. And whenever she looked away I
+looked at her--without the slightest offense, Mr. Keen, until, once, she
+caught my eye--"
+
+He passed an unsteady hand over his forehead.
+
+"For a moment we looked full at one another," he continued. "I got red,
+sir; I felt it, and I couldn't look away. And when I turned color like a
+blooming beet, she began to turn pink like a rosebud, and she looked
+full into my eyes with such a wonderful purity, such exquisite
+innocence, that I--I never felt so near--er--heaven in my life! No, sir,
+not even when they ambushed us at Manoa Wells--but that's another
+thing--only it is part of this business."
+
+He tightened his clasped hands over his knee until the knuckles
+whitened.
+
+"_That's_ my story, Mr. Keen," he said crisply.
+
+"All of it?"
+
+Harren looked at the floor, then at Keen: "No, not all. You'll think me
+a lunatic if I tell you all."
+
+"Oh, you saw her again?"
+
+"N-never! That is--"
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Not in--in the flesh."
+
+"Oh, in dreams?"
+
+Harren stirred uneasily. "I don't know what you call them. I have seen
+her since--in the sunlight, in the open, in my quarters in Manila,
+standing there perfectly distinct, looking at me with such strange,
+beautiful eyes--"
+
+"Go on," said the Tracer, nodding.
+
+"What else is there to say?" muttered Harren.
+
+"You saw her--or a phantom which resembled her. Did she speak?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you speak to her?"
+
+"N-no. Once I held out my--my arms."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"She wasn't there," said Harren simply.
+
+"She vanished?"
+
+"No--I don't know. I--I didn't see her any more."
+
+"Didn't she fade?"
+
+"No. I can't explain. She--there was only myself in the room."
+
+"How many times has she appeared to you?"
+
+"A great many times."
+
+"In your room?"
+
+"Yes. And in the road under a vertical sun; in the forest, in the paddy
+fields. I have seen her passing through the hallway of a friend's
+house--turning on the stair to look back at me! I saw her standing just
+back of the firing-line at Manoa Wells when we were preparing to rush
+the forts, and it scared me so that I jumped forward to draw her back.
+But--she wasn't there, Mr. Keen. . . .
+
+"On the transport she stood facing me on deck one moonlit evening for
+five minutes. I saw her in 'Frisco; she sat in the Pullman twice between
+Denver and this city. Twice in my room at the Vice-Regent she has sat
+opposite me at midday, so clear, so beautiful, so real that--that I
+could scarcely believe she was only a--a--" He hesitated.
+
+"The apparition of her own subconscious self," said the Tracer quietly.
+"Science has been forced to admit such things, and, as you know, we are
+on the verge of understanding the alphabet of some of the unknown forces
+which we must some day reckon with."
+
+Harren, tense, a trifle pale, gazed at him earnestly.
+
+"Do _you_ believe in such things?"
+
+"How can I avoid believing?" said the Tracer. "Every day, in my
+profession, we have proof of the existence of forces for which we have
+as yet no explanation--or, at best, a very crude one. I have had case
+after case of premonition; case after case of dual and even multiple
+personality; case after case where apparitions played a vital part in
+the plot which was brought to me to investigate. I'll tell you this,
+Captain: I, personally, never saw an apparition, never was obsessed by
+premonitions, never received any communications from the outer void. But
+I have had to do with those who undoubtedly did. Therefore I listen with
+all seriousness and respect to what you tell me."
+
+"Suppose," said Harren, growing suddenly red, "that I should tell you I
+have succeeded in photographing this phantom."
+
+The Tracer sat silent. He was astounded, but, he did not betray it.
+
+"You have that photograph, Captain Harren?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"In my rooms."
+
+"You wish me to see it?"
+
+Harren hesitated. "I--there is--seems to be--something almost sacred to
+me in that photograph. . . . You understand me, do you not? Yet, if it
+will help you in finding her--"
+
+"Oh," said the Tracer in guileless astonishment, "you desire to find
+this young lady. Why?"
+
+Harren stared. "Why? Why do I want to find her? Man, I--I can't live
+without her!"
+
+"I thought you were not certain whether you really could be in love."
+
+The hot color in the Captain's bronzed cheeks mounted to his hair.
+
+"_Ex_actly," purred the Tracer, looking out of the window. "Suppose we
+walk around to your rooms after luncheon. Shall we?"
+
+Harren picked up his hat and gloves, hesitating, lingering on the
+threshold. "You _don't_ think she is--a--dead?" he asked unsteadily.
+
+"No," said Mr. Keen, "I don't."
+
+"Because," said Harren wistfully, "her apparition is so superbly healthy
+and--and glowing with youth and life--"
+
+"That is probably what sent it half the world over to confront you,"
+said the Tracer gravely; "youth and life aglow with spiritual health. I
+think, Captain, that she has been seeing you, too, during these three
+years, but probably only in her dreams--memories of your encounters with
+her subconscious self floating over continents and oceans in a quest of
+which her waking intelligence is innocently unaware."
+
+The Captain colored like a schoolboy, lingering at the door, hat in
+hand. Then he straightened up to the full height of his slim but
+powerful figure.
+
+"At three?" he inquired bluntly.
+
+"At three o'clock in your room, Hotel Vice-Regent. Good morning,
+Captain."
+
+"Good morning," said Harren dreamily, and walked away, head bent, gray
+eyes lost in retrospection, and on his lean, bronzed, attractive face an
+afterglow of color wholly becoming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When the Tracer of Lost Persons entered Captain Harren's room at the
+Hotel Vice-Regent that afternoon he found the young man standing at a
+center table, pencil in hand, studying a sheet of paper which was
+covered with letters and figures.
+
+The two men eyed one another in silence for a moment, then Harren
+pointed grimly to the confusion of letters and figures covering dozens
+of scattered sheets lying on the table.
+
+"That's part of my madness," he said with a short laugh. "Can you make
+anything of such lunatic work?"
+
+The Tracer picked up a sheet of paper covered with letters of the
+alphabet and Roman and Arabic numerals. He dropped it presently and
+picked up another comparatively blank sheet, on which were the following
+figures:
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]
+
+He studied it for a while, then glanced interrogatively at Harren.
+
+"It's nothing," said Harren. "I've been groping for three years--but
+it's no use. That's lunatics' work." He wheeled squarely on his heels,
+looking straight at the Tracer. "_Do_ you think I've had a touch of the
+sun?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Keen, drawing a chair to the table. "Saner men than you
+or I have spent a lifetime over this so-called Seal of Solomon." He laid
+his finger on the two symbols--
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]
+
+Then, looking across the table at Harren: "What," he asked, "has the
+Seal of Solomon to do with your case?"
+
+"_She_--" muttered Harren, and fell silent.
+
+The Tracer waited; Harren said nothing.
+
+"Where is the photograph?"
+
+Harren unlocked a drawer in the table, hesitated, looked strangely at
+the Tracer.
+
+"Mr. Keen," he said, "there is nothing on earth I hold more sacred than
+this. There is only one thing in the world that could justify me in
+showing it to a living soul--my--my desire to find--her--"
+
+"No," said Keen coolly, "that is not enough to justify you--the mere
+desire to find the living original of this apparition. Nothing could
+justify your showing it unless you love her."
+
+Harren held the picture tightly, staring full at the Tracer. A dull
+flush mounted to his forehead, and very slowly he laid the picture
+before the Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+Minute after minute sped while the Tracer bent above the photograph, his
+finely modeled features absolutely devoid of expression. Harren had
+drawn his chair beside him, and now sat leaning forward, bronzed cheek
+resting in his hand, staring fixedly at the picture.
+
+"When was this--this photograph taken?" asked the Tracer quietly.
+
+"The day after I arrived in New York. I was here, alone, smoking my pipe
+and glancing over the evening paper just before dressing for dinner. It
+was growing rather dark in the room; I had not turned on the electric
+light. My camera lay on the table--there it is!--that kodak. I had taken
+a few snapshots on shipboard; there was one film left."
+
+He leaned more heavily on his elbow, eyes fixed upon the picture.
+
+"It was almost dark," he repeated. "I laid aside the evening paper and
+stood up, thinking about dressing for dinner, when my eyes happened to
+fall on the camera. It occurred to me that I might as well unload it,
+let the unused film go, and send the roll to be developed and printed;
+and I picked up the camera--"
+
+"Yes," said the Tracer softly.
+
+"I picked it up and was starting toward the window where there remained
+enough daylight to see by--"
+
+The Tracer nodded gently.
+
+"Then I saw _her_!" said Harren under his breath.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"There--standing by that window. You can see the window and curtain in
+the photograph."
+
+The Tracer gazed intently at the picture.
+
+"She looked at me," said Harren, steadying his voice. "She was as real
+as you are, and she stood there, smiling faintly, her dark, lovely eyes
+meeting mine."
+
+"Did you speak?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How long did she remain there?"
+
+"I don't know--time seemed to stop--the world--everything grew still.
+. . . Then, little by little, something began to stir under my stunned
+senses--that germ of misgiving, that dreadful doubt of my own sanity.
+. . . I scarcely knew what I was doing when I took the photograph;
+besides, it had grown quite dark, and I could scarcely see her." He drew
+himself erect with a nervous movement. "How on earth could I have
+obtained that photograph of her in the darkness?" he demanded.
+
+"N-rays," said the Tracer coolly. "It has been done in France."
+
+"Yes, from living people, but--"
+
+"What the N-ray is in living organisms, we must call, for lack of a
+better term, the subaura in the phantom."
+
+They bent over the photograph together. Presently the Tracer said: "She
+is very, very beautiful?"
+
+Harren's dry lips unclosed, but he uttered no sound.
+
+"She is beautiful, is she not?" repeated the Tracer, turning to look at
+the young man.
+
+"Can you not see she is?" he asked impatiently.
+
+"No," said the Tracer.
+
+Harren stared at him.
+
+"Captain Harren," continued the Tracer, "I can see nothing upon this bit
+of paper that resembles in the remotest degree a human face or figure."
+
+Harren turned white.
+
+"Not that I doubt that _you_ can see it," pursued the Tracer calmly. "I
+simply repeat that I see absolutely nothing on this paper except a part
+of a curtain, a window pane, and--and--"
+
+"What! for God's sake!" cried Harren hoarsely.
+
+"I don't know yet. Wait; let me study it."
+
+"Can you not see her face, her eyes? _Don't_ you see that exquisite slim
+figure standing there by the curtain?" demanded Harren, laying his
+shaking finger on the photograph. "Why, man, it is as clear, as clean
+cut, as distinct as though the picture had been taken in sunlight! Do
+you mean to say that there is nothing there--that I am crazy?"
+
+"No. Wait."
+
+"Wait! How can I wait when you sit staring at her picture and telling me
+that you can't see it, but that it is doubtless there? Are you deceiving
+me, Mr. Keen? Are you trying to humor me, trying to be kind to me,
+knowing all the while that I'm crazy--"
+
+"Wait, man! You are no more crazy than I am. I tell you that I can see
+something on the window pane--"
+
+He suddenly sprang up and walked to the window, leaning close and
+examining the glass. Harren followed and laid his hand lightly over the
+pane.
+
+"Do you see any marks on the glass?" demanded Keen.
+
+Harren shook his head.
+
+"Have you a magnifying glass?" asked the Tracer.
+
+Harren pointed back to the table, and they returned to the photograph,
+the Tracer bending over it and examining it through the glass.
+
+"All I see," he said, still studying the photograph, "is a corner of a
+curtain and a window on which certain figures seem to have been cut.
+. . . Look, Captain Harren, can you see them?"
+
+"I see some marks--some squares."
+
+"You can't see anything written on that pane--as though cut by a
+diamond?"
+
+"Nothing distinct."
+
+"But you see _her_?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"In minute detail?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The Tracer thought a moment: "Does she wear a ring?"
+
+"Yes; can't you see?"
+
+"Draw it for me."
+
+They seated themselves side by side, and Harren drew a rough sketch of
+the ring which he insisted was so plainly visible on her hand:
+
+[Illustration: Ring with an X]
+
+"Oh," observed the Tracer, "she wears the Seal of Solomon on her ring."
+
+Harren looked up at him. "That symbol has haunted me persistently for
+three years," he said. "I have found it everywhere--on articles that I
+buy, on house furniture, on the belts of dead ladrones, on the hilts of
+creeses, on the funnels of steamers, on the headstalls of horses. If
+they put a laundry mark on my linen it's certain to be this! If I buy a
+box of matches the sign is on it. Why, I've even seen it on the
+brilliant wings of tropical insects. It's got on my nerves. I dream
+about it."
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+"And you buy books about it and try to work out its mystical meaning?"
+suggested the Tracer, smiling.
+
+But Harren's gray eyes were serious. He said: "_She_ never comes to me
+without that symbol somewhere about her. . . . I told you she never
+spoke to me. That is true; yet once, in a vivid dream of her, she did
+speak. I--I was almost ashamed to tell you of that."
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"A--a dream? Do you wish to know what I dreamed?"
+
+"Yes--if it was a dream."
+
+"It was. I was asleep on the deck of the _Mindinao_, dead tired after a
+fruitless hike. I dreamed she came toward me through a young woodland
+all lighted by the sun, and in her hands she held masses of that wild
+flower we call Solomon's Seal. And she said--in the voice I know must be
+like hers: 'If you could only read! If you would only understand the
+message I send you! It is everywhere on earth for you to read, if you
+only would!'
+
+"I said: 'Is the message in the seal? Is that the key to it?'
+
+"She nodded, laughing, burying her face in the flowers, and said:
+
+"'Perhaps I can write it more plainly for you some day; I will try very,
+very hard.'
+
+"And after that she went away--not swiftly--for I saw her at moments far
+away in the woods; but I must have confused her with the glimmering
+shafts of sunlight, and in a little while the woodland grew dark and I
+woke with the racket of a Colt's automatic in my ears."
+
+He passed his sun-bronzed hand over his face, hesitated, then leaned
+over the photograph once more, which the Tracer was studying intently
+through the magnifying glass.
+
+"There is something on that window in the photograph which I'm going to
+copy," he said. "Please shove a pad and pencil toward me."
+
+Still examining the photograph through the glass which he held in his
+right hand, Mr. Keen picked up the pencil and, feeling for the pad,
+began very slowly to form the following series of symbols:
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]
+
+"What on earth are you doing?" muttered Captain Harren, twisting his
+short mustache in perplexity.
+
+"I am copying what I see through this magnifying glass written on the
+window pane in the photograph," said the Tracer calmly. "Can't you see
+those marks?"
+
+"I--I do now; I never noticed them before particularly--only that there
+were scratches there."
+
+When at length the Tracer had finished his work he sat, chin on hand,
+examining it in silence. Presently he turned toward Harren, smiling.
+
+"Well?" inquired the younger man impatiently; "do those scratches
+representing Solomon's Seal mean anything?"
+
+"It's the strangest cipher I ever encountered," said Mr. Keen--"the
+strangest I ever heard of. I have seen hundreds of
+ciphers--hundreds--secret codes of the State Department, secret military
+codes, elaborate Oriental ciphers, symbols used in commercial
+transactions, symbols used by criminals and every species of malefactor.
+And every one of them can be solved with time and patience and a little
+knowledge of the subject. But this"--he sat looking at it with eyes half
+closed--"this is _too_ simple."
+
+"Simple!"
+
+"Very. It's so simple that it's baffling."
+
+"Do you mean to say you are going to be able to find a meaning in
+squares and crosses?"
+
+"I--I don't believe it is going to be so very difficult to translate
+them."
+
+"Great guns!" said the Captain. "Do you mean to say that you can
+ultimately translate that cipher?"
+
+The Tracer smiled. "Let's examine it for repetitions first. Here we have
+this symbol
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+repeated five times. It's likely to be the letter E. I think--" His
+voice ceased; for a quarter of an hour he pored over the symbols, pencil
+in hand, checking off some, substituting a letter here and there.
+
+"No," he said; "the usual doesn't work in this case. It's an absurdly
+simple cipher. I have a notion that numbers play a part in it--you see
+where these crossed squares are bracketed--those must be numbers
+requiring two figures--"
+
+He fell silent again, and for another quarter of an hour he remained
+motionless, immersed in the problem before him, Harren frowning at the
+paper over his shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Come!" said the Tracer suddenly; "this won't do. There are too few
+symbols to give us a key; too few repetitions to furnish us with any key
+basis. Come, Captain, let us use our intellects; let us talk it over
+with that paper lying there between us. It's a simple cipher--a
+childishly simple one if we use our wits. Now, sir, what I see repeated
+before us on this sheet of paper is merely one of the forms of a symbol
+known as Solomon's Seal. The symbol is, as we see, repeated a great many
+times. Every seal has been dotted or crossed on some one of the lines
+composing it; some seals are coupled with brackets and armatures."
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+"What of it?" inquired Harren vacantly.
+
+"Well, sir, in the first place, that symbol is supposed to represent the
+spiritual and material, as you know. What else do you know about it?"
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+"Nothing. I bought a book about it, but made nothing of it."
+
+"Isn't it supposed," asked Mr. Keen, "to contain within itself the nine
+numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and even the zero symbol?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"_Ex_actly. Here's the seal
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+Now I'll mark the one, two, and three by crossing the lines, like this:
+
+one,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+two,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+three,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+Now, eliminating all lines not crossed there remains
+
+the one,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+the two,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+the three,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+And here is the entire series:
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]
+
+and the zero--"
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+A sudden excitement stirred Harren; he leaned over the paper, gazing
+earnestly at the cipher; the Tracer rose and glanced around the room as
+though in search of something.
+
+"Is there a telephone here?" he asked.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, don't give this up just yet," exclaimed Harren.
+"These things mean numbers; don't you see? Look at that!" pointing to a
+linked pair of seals,
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+"That means the number nineteen! You can form it by using only the
+crossed lines of the seal.
+
+[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]
+
+Don't you see, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"Yes, Captain Harren, the cipher is, as you say, very plain; quite as
+easy to read as so much handwriting. That is why I wish to use your
+telephone--at once, if you please."
+
+"It's in my bedroom; you don't mind if I go on working out this cipher
+while you're telephoning?"
+
+"Not in the least," said the Tracer blandly. He walked into the
+Captain's bedroom, closing the door behind him; then he stepped over to
+the telephone, unhooked the receiver, and called up his own
+headquarters.
+
+"Hello. This is Mr. Keen. I want to speak to Miss Borrow."
+
+In a few moments Miss Borrow answered: "I am here, Mr. Keen."
+
+"Good. Look up the name Inwood. Try New York first--Edith Inwood is the
+name. Look sharp, please; I am holding the wire."
+
+He held it for ten full minutes; then Miss Borrow's low voice called him
+over the wire.
+
+"Go ahead," said the Tracer quietly.
+
+"There is only one Edith Inwood in New York, Mr. Keen--Miss Edith
+Inwood, graduate of Barnard, 1902--left an orphan 1903 and obliged to
+support herself--became an assistant to Professor Boggs of the Museum of
+Inscriptions. Is considered an authority upon Arabian cryptograms. Has
+written a monograph on the Herati symbol--a short treatise on the
+Swastika. She is twenty-four years of age. Do you require further
+details?"
+
+"No," said the Tracer; "please ring off."
+
+Then he called up General Information. "I want the Museum of
+Inscriptions. Get me their number, please." After a moment: "Is this the
+Museum of Inscriptions?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is Professor Boggs there?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is this Professor Boggs?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Could you find time to decipher an inscription for me at once?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Of course I know you are extremely busy, but have you no assistant who
+could do it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What did you say her name is? Miss Inwood?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh! And will the young lady translate the inscription at once if I send
+a copy of it to her by messenger?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Thank you very much, Professor. I will send a messenger to Miss Inwood
+with a copy of the inscription. Good-by."
+
+He hung up the receiver, turned thoughtfully, opened the door again, and
+walked into the sunlit living room.
+
+"Look here!" cried the Captain in a high state of excitement. "I've got
+a lot of numbers out of it already."
+
+"Wonderful!" murmured the Tracer, looking over the young man's broad
+shoulders at a sheet of paper bearing these numbers:
+
+9--14--5--22--5--18--19--1--23--25--15--21--2--21--20--15--14--3--5--
+9--12--15--22--5--25--15--21--5--4--9--20--8--9--14--23--15--15--4.
+
+"Marvelous!" repeated the Tracer, smiling. "Now what _do_ you suppose
+those numbers can stand for?"
+
+"Letters!" announced the Captain triumphantly. "Take the number nine,
+for example. The ninth letter in the alphabet is I! Mr. Keen, suppose we
+try writing down the letters according to that system!"
+
+"Suppose we do," agreed the Tracer gravely.
+
+So, counting under his breath, the young man set down the letters in the
+following order, not attempting to group them into words:
+
+INEVERSAWYOUBUTONCEILOVEYOUEDITHINWOOD.
+
+Then he leaned back, excited, triumphant.
+
+"There you are!" he said; "only, of course, it makes no sense." He
+examined it in silence, and gradually a hopeless expression effaced the
+animation. "How the deuce am I going to separate that mass of letters
+into words?" he muttered.
+
+"This way," said the Tracer, smilingly taking the pencil from his
+fingers, and he wrote: I--NEVER--SAW--YOU--BUT--ONCE. I--LOVE--YOU.
+EDITH INWOOD.
+
+Then he laid the pencil on the table and walked to the window.
+
+Once or twice he fancied that he heard incoherent sounds behind him.
+And after a while he turned, retracing his steps leisurely. Captain
+Harren, extremely pink, stood tugging at his short mustache and studying
+the papers on the desk.
+
+"Well?" inquired the Tracer, amused.
+
+The young man pointed to the translation with unsteady finger. "W-what
+on earth does that mean?" he demanded shakily. "Who is Edith Inwood?
+W-what on earth does that cryptogram mean on the window pane in the
+photograph? How did it come there? It isn't on my window pane, you see!"
+
+The Tracer said quietly: "That is not a photograph of your window."
+
+"What!"
+
+"No, Captain. Here! Look at it closely through this glass. There are
+sixteen small panes in that sash; now count the panes in your
+window--eight! Besides, look at that curtain. It is made of some figured
+stuff like chintz. Now, look at your own curtain yonder! It is of plain
+velour."
+
+"But--but I took that photograph! She stood there--there by that very
+window!"
+
+The Tracer leaned over the photograph, examining it through the glass.
+And, studying it, he said: "Do you still see _her_ in this photograph,
+Captain Harren?"
+
+"Certainly. Can you not see her?"
+
+"No," murmured the Tracer, "but I see the window which she really stood
+by when her phantom came here seeking you. And that is sufficient. Come,
+Captain Harren, we are going out together."
+
+The Captain looked at him earnestly; something in Mr. Keen's eyes seemed
+to fascinate him.
+
+"You think that--that it's likely we are g-going to see--_her_!" he
+faltered.
+
+"If I were you," mused the Tracer of Lost Persons, joining the tips of
+his lean fingers meditatively--"If I were you I should wear a silk hat
+and a frock coat. It's--it's afternoon, anyhow," he added deprecatingly,
+"and we are liable to make a call."
+
+Captain Harren turned like a man in a dream and entered his bedroom. And
+when he emerged he was dressed and groomed with pathetic precision.
+
+"Mr. Keen," he said, "I--I don't know why I am d-daring to hope for all
+s-sorts of things. Nothing you have said really warrants it. But somehow
+I'm venturing to cherish an absurd notion that I may s-see her."
+
+"Perhaps," said the Tracer, smiling.
+
+"Mr. Keen! You wouldn't say that if--if there was no chance, would you?
+You wouldn't dash a fellow's hopes--"
+
+"No, I wouldn't," said Mr. Keen. "I tell you frankly that I expect to
+find her."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"We'll see," said Mr. Keen guardedly. "Come, Captain, don't look that
+way! Courage, sir! We are about to execute a turning movement; but you
+look like a Russian general on his way to the south front."
+
+Harren managed to laugh; they went out, side by side, descended the
+elevator, and found a cab at the _porte-cochère_. Mr. Keen gave the
+directions and followed the Captain into the cab.
+
+"Now," he said, as they wheeled south, "we are first going to visit the
+Museum of Inscriptions and have this cipher translation verified. Here
+is the cipher as I copied it. Hold it tightly, Captain; we've only a few
+blocks to drive."
+
+Indeed they were already nearly there. The hansom drew up in front of a
+plain granite building wedged in between some rather elaborate private
+dwelling-houses. Over the door were letters of dull bronze:
+
+              AMERICAN MUSEUM OF INSCRIPTIONS
+
+and the two men descended and entered a wide marble hall lined with
+glass-covered cabinets containing plaster casts of various ancient
+inscriptions and a few bronze and marble originals. Several female
+frumps were nosing the exhibits.
+
+An attendant in livery stood in the middle distance. The Tracer walked
+over to him. "I have an appointment to consult Miss Inwood," he
+whispered.
+
+"This way, sir," nodded the attendant, and the Tracer signaled the
+Captain to follow.
+
+They climbed several marble stairways, crossed a rotunda, and entered a
+room--a sort of library. Beyond was a door which bore the inscription:
+
+                      ASSISTANT CURATOR
+
+"Now," said the Tracer of Lost Persons in a low voice to Captain Harren,
+"I am going to ask you to sit here for a few minutes while I interview
+the assistant curator. You don't mind, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't mind," said Harren wearily, "only, when are we going to
+begin to search for--_her_?"
+
+"Very soon--I may say extremely soon," said Mr. Keen gravely. "By the
+way, I think I'll take that sheet of paper on which I copied the cipher.
+Thank you. I won't be long."
+
+The attendant had vanished. Captain Harren sat down by a window and
+gazed out into the late afternoon sunshine. The Tracer of Lost Persons,
+treading softly across the carpeted floor, approached the sanctuary,
+turned the handle, and walked in, carefully closing the door behind him.
+
+There was a young girl seated at a desk by an open window; she looked up
+quietly as he entered, then rose leisurely.
+
+"Miss Inwood?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She was slender, dark-eyed, dark-haired--a lovely, wholesome young
+creature; gracious and graceful. And that was all--for the Tracer of
+Lost Persons could not see through the eyes of Captain Harren, and
+perhaps that is why he was not able to discern a miracle of beauty in
+the pretty girl who confronted him--no magic and matchless marvel of
+transcendent loveliness--only a quiet, sweet-faced, dark-eyed young girl
+whose features and figure were attractive in the manner that youth is
+always attractive. But then it is a gift of the gods to see through eyes
+anointed by the gods.
+
+The Tracer touched his gray mustache and bowed; the girl bowed very
+sweetly.
+
+"You are Mr. Keen," she said; "you have an inscription for me to
+translate."
+
+"A mystery for young eyes to interpret," he said, smiling. "May I sit
+here--and tell my story before I show you my inscription?"
+
+"Please do," she said, seating herself at her desk and facing him, one
+slender white hand supporting the oval of her face.
+
+The Tracer drew his chair a little forward. "It is a curious matter," he
+said. "May I give you a brief outline of the details?"
+
+"By all means, Mr. Keen."
+
+"Then let me begin by saying that the inscription of which I have a copy
+was probably scratched upon a window pane by means of a diamond."
+
+"Oh! Then--then it is not an ancient inscription, Mr. Keen."
+
+"The theme is ancient--the oldest theme in the world--love! The cipher
+is old--as old as King Solomon." She looked up quickly. The Tracer,
+apparently engrossed in his own story, went on with it. "Three years ago
+the young girl who wrote this inscription upon the window pane of
+her--her bedroom, I think it was--fell in love. Do you follow me, Miss
+Inwood?"
+
+Miss Inwood sat very still--wide, dark eyes fixed on him.
+
+"Fell in love," repeated the Tracer musingly, "not in the ordinary way.
+That is the point, you see. No, she fell in love at first sight; fell
+in love with a young man whom she never before had seen, never again
+beheld--and never forgot. Do you still follow me, Miss Inwood?"
+
+She made the slightest motion with her lips.
+
+"No," mused the Tracer of Lost Persons, "she never forgot him. I am not
+sure, but I think she sometimes dreamed of him. She dreamed of him
+awake, too. Once she inscribed a message to him, cutting it with the
+diamond in her ring on the window pane--"
+
+A slight sound escaped from Miss Inwood's lips. "I beg your pardon,"
+said the Tracer, "did you say something?"
+
+The girl had risen, pale, astounded, incredulous.
+
+"Who are you?" she faltered. "What has this--this story to do with me?"
+
+"Child," said the Tracer of Lost Persons, "the Seal of Solomon is a
+splendid mystery. All of heaven and earth are included within its
+symbol. And more, more than you dream of, more than I dare fathom; and I
+am an old man, my child--old, alone, with nobody to fear for, nothing to
+dread, not even the end of all--because I am ready for that, too. Yet I,
+having nothing on earth to dread, dare not fathom what that symbol may
+mean, nor what vast powers it may exert on life. God knows. It may be
+the very signet of Fate itself; the sign manual of Destiny."
+
+He drew the paper from his pocket, unrolled it, and spread it out under
+her frightened eyes.
+
+"_That!_" she whispered, steadying herself blindly against the arm he
+offered. She stood a moment so, then, shuddering, covered her eyes with
+both hands. The Tracer of Lost Persons looked at her, turned and opened
+the door.
+
+"Captain Harren!" he called quietly. Harren, pacing the anteroom, turned
+and came forward. As he entered the door he caught sight of the girl
+crouching by the window, her face hidden in her hands, and at the same
+moment she dropped her hands and looked straight at him.
+
+"_You!_" she gasped.
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons stepped out, closing the door. For a moment
+he stood there, tall, gaunt, gray, staring vacantly into space.
+
+"She _was_ beautiful--when she looked at him," he muttered.
+
+For another minute he stood there, hesitating, glancing backward at the
+closed door. Then he went away, stooping slightly, his top hat held
+close against the breast of his tightly buttoned frock coat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+During his first year of wedded bliss, Gatewood cut the club. When Kerns
+wanted to see him he had to call like other people or, like other
+people, accept young Mrs. Gatewood's invitations.
+
+"Why," said Gatewood scornfully, "should I, thirty-four years of age and
+safely married, go to a club? Why should I, at my age, idle with a lot
+of idlers and listen to stuffy stories from stuffier individuals? Do you
+think that stale tobacco smoke, and the idiotically reiterated click of
+billiard balls, and the vacant stare of the fashionably brainless, and
+the meaningless exchange of banalities with the intellectually aimless
+have any attractions for me?"
+
+Mrs. Gatewood raised her pretty eyes in silence; Kerns returned her
+amused gaze rather blankly.
+
+"Clubs!" sniffed Gatewood. "What are clubs but pretexts for wasting
+time? What mental, what spiritual stimulus can a man expect to find in a
+club? Why, Kerns, when I look back a year and think what I was, and when
+I look at you and think what you still are--"
+
+"John," said Mrs. Gatewood softly.
+
+"Oh, he knows it!" insisted her husband, "don't you, Tommy? You know the
+sort of life you're leading, don't you? You know what a miserable,
+aimless, selfish, unambitious, pitiable existence an unmarried man leads
+who lives at his club; don't you?"
+
+"Certainly," said Kerns, blinking into the smiling gaze of Mrs.
+Gatewood.
+
+"Then why don't you marry?"
+
+But Kerns had risen and was making his adieus with cheerful decision;
+and Mrs. Gatewood was laughing as she gave him her slender hand.
+
+"Now I know a girl--" began Gatewood; but his wife was still speaking to
+Kerns, so he circled around them, politely suppressing the excitement of
+a sudden idea struggling for utterance.
+
+Mrs. Gatewood was saying: "I do wish John would go to his clubs
+occasionally. Because a man is married is no reason for his losing touch
+with his clubs--"
+
+"I know a girl," broke in Gatewood excitedly, laying his arm on Kerns's
+to detain him; but Kerns slid sideways through the door with a smile so
+noncommittal that Mrs. Gatewood laughed again and, linking her arm in
+her husband's, faced partly toward him. This maneuver, and the
+slightest pressure of her shoulder, obliged her husband to begin a
+turning movement, so that Kerns might reasonably make his escape in the
+middle of Gatewood's sentence; which he did with nimble and circumspect
+agility.
+
+"I--I know a--" began Gatewood desperately, twisting his head over his
+shoulder, only to hear the deadened patter of his friend's feet over the
+velvet stair carpet and the subdued clang of the front door.
+
+"Isn't it extraordinary?" he said to his wife. "I've been trying to tell
+Tommy, every time he comes here, about a girl I know--just the very girl
+he ought to marry; and something prevents him from listening every
+time."
+
+The attractive young matron beside him turned her face so that her eyes
+were directly in line with his.
+
+"Did you ever know any people named Manners?" she asked.
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"You never knew a girl named Marjorie Manners, did you, John?"
+
+"No. What about her?"
+
+"You never heard Mr. Kerns speak of her, did you, dear?"
+
+"No, never. Tommy doesn't talk about girls."
+
+"You never heard him speak of a Mrs. Stanley?"
+
+"Never. Who are these two women?"
+
+"One and the same, dear. Marjorie Manners married an Englishman named
+Stanley six years ago. Do you happen to recollect that Mr. Kerns took
+his vacation in England six years ago?"
+
+"Yes. What of it?"
+
+"He crossed to Southampton with Marjorie and her mother. He didn't know
+she was going over to be married, and she didn't tell him. She wrote to
+me about it, though. I was in school at Farmington; she left school to
+marry--a mere child of eighteen, undeveloped for her age, thin, almost
+scrawny, with pipe-stem arms and neck, red hair, a very sweet,
+full-lipped mouth, and gray eyes that were too big for her face."
+
+"Well," said Gatewood with a short laugh, "what about it? You don't
+think Kerns fell in love with an insect of that genus, do you?"
+
+"Yes, I do," smiled Mrs. Gatewood.
+
+"Nonsense. Besides, what of it? She's married, you say."
+
+"Her husband died of enteric at Ladysmith. She wrote me. She has never
+remarried. Think of it, John--in all these years she has never
+remarried!"
+
+"Oh!" said Gatewood pityingly; "do you really suppose that Tommy Kerns
+has been nursing a blighted affection all these years without ever
+giving _me_ an inkling? Besides, men don't do that; men don't curl up
+and blight. Besides, men don't take any stock in big-eyed, flat-chested,
+red-headed pipe stems. Why do you think that Kerns ever cared for her?"
+
+"I know he did."
+
+"How do you know it?"
+
+"From Marjorie's letters."
+
+"The conceited kid! Well, of all insufferable nerve! A man like Kerns--a
+man--one of the finest, noblest characters--spiritually, intellectually,
+physically--a practically faultless specimen of manhood! And a
+red-headed, spindle-legged--Oh, my! Oh, fizz! Dearest, men don't worship
+a cage of bones with an eighteen-year-old soul in it--like a nervous
+canary pecking out at the world!"
+
+"She created a furor in England," observed his wife, smiling.
+
+"Oh, I dare say she might over there. Besides, she's doubtless fattened
+up since then. But if you suppose for one moment that Tommy could even
+remember a girl like that--"
+
+Mrs. Gatewood smiled again--the wise, sweet smile of a young matron in
+whom her husband's closest friend had confided. And after a moment or
+two the wise smile became more thoughtful and less assured; for that
+very day the Tracer of Lost Persons had called on her to inquire about a
+Mrs. Stanley--a new client of his who had recently bought a town house
+in East Eighty-third Street and a country house on Long Island; and who
+had applied to him to find her fugitive butler and a pint or two of
+family jewels. And, after her talk with the Tracer of Lost Persons, Mrs.
+Gatewood knew that her favorite among all her husband's friends, Mr.
+Kerns, would never of his own volition go near that same Marjorie
+Manners who had flirted with him to the very perilous verge before she
+told him why she was going to England--and who, now a widow, had
+returned with her five-year-old daughter to dwell once more in the city
+of her ancestors.
+
+Kerns had said very simply: "She has spoiled women for me--all except
+you, Mrs. Gatewood. And if Jack hadn't married you--"
+
+"I understand, Mr. Kerns. I'm awfully sorry."
+
+"Don't feel sorry; only, if you can, call Jack off. He's been perfectly
+possessed to marry me to somebody ever since he married you. And if I
+told him why I don't care to consider the matter he wouldn't believe
+me--he'd spend his life in trying to bring me around. Besides, I
+couldn't ever tell him about--Marjorie Manners. Anyhow, nothing on earth
+could ever induce me to look at her again. . . . You say she is now a
+widow?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Kerns, and very beautiful."
+
+"Never again," muttered Kerns. "Never! She was homely enough when I
+asked her to marry me. I don't want to see her; I don't want to know
+what she looks like. I'm glad she has changed so I wouldn't recognize
+her, for that means the end of it all--the final elimination of the girl
+I remember on the ship. . . . It was probably a sort of diseased
+infatuation, wasn't it, Mrs. Gatewood? Think of it! A few days on
+shipboard and--and I asked her to marry me! . . . I don't blame her,
+after all, for letting me dangle. It was an excellent opportunity for
+her to study a rare species of idiot. She was justified and I am
+satisfied. Only, do call Jack off with a hint or two."
+
+"I shall try," said young Mrs. Gatewood thoughtfully--very thoughtfully,
+for already every atom and fiber of her femininity was aroused in behalf
+of these two estranged young people whom Providence certainly had not
+meant to put asunder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Nothing," said Gatewood firmly, "can make me believe that Kerns ought
+not to marry somebody; and I'm never going to let up on him until he
+does. I'll bet I could fix him for life if I called in the Tracer to
+help me. Isn't it extraordinary how Kerns has kept out of it all these
+years?"
+
+The attractive girl beside him turned her face once more so that her
+clear, sweet eyes were directly in line with his.
+
+"It _is_ extraordinary," she said seriously. "I think you ought to drop
+in at the club some day when you can corner him and bully him."
+
+"I don't want to go to the club," said the infatuated man.
+
+"Why, dear?"
+
+He looked straight at her and she flushed prettily, while a tint of
+color touched his own face. Which was very nice of him. So she didn't
+say what she was going to say--that it would be perhaps better for them
+both if he practiced on her an artistic absence now and then. Younger in
+years, she was more mature than he. She knew. But she was too much in
+love with him to salt their ambrosia with common sense or suggest
+economy in their use of the nectar bottle.
+
+However, the gods attend to that, and she knew they would, and she let
+them. So one balmy evening late in May, when the new moon's ghost
+floated through the upper haze, and the golden Diana above Manhattan
+turned flame color, and the electric lights began to glimmer along Fifth
+Avenue, and the first faint scent of the young summer freshened the
+foliage in square and park, Kerns, stopping at the club for a moment,
+found Gatewood seated at the same window they both were wont to haunt in
+earlier and more flippant days.
+
+"Are you dining here?" inquired Kerns, pushing the electric button with
+enthusiasm. "Well, that's the first glimmer of common sense you've
+betrayed since you've been married!"
+
+"Dining _here_!" repeated Gatewood. "I should hope not! I am just going
+home--"
+
+"He's thoroughly cowed," commented Kerns; "every married man you meet at
+the club is just going home." But he continued to push the button,
+nevertheless.
+
+Gatewood leaned back in his chair and gazed about him, nose in the air.
+"What a life!" he observed virtuously. "It's all I can do to stand it
+for ten minutes. You're here for the evening, I suppose?" he added
+pityingly.
+
+"No," said Kerns; "I'm going uptown to Billy Lee's house to get my suit
+case. His family are out of town, and he is at Seabright, so he let me
+camp there until the workmen finish papering my rooms upstairs. I'm to
+lock up the house and send the key to the Burglar Alarm Company
+to-night. Then I go to Boston on the 12.10. Want to come? There'll be a
+few doing."
+
+"To Boston! What for?"
+
+"Contracts! We can go out to Cambridge when I've finished my business.
+There'll be _etwas_ doing."
+
+"_Can't_ you ever recover from being an undergraduate?" asked Gatewood,
+disgusted.
+
+"Well--is there anything the matter with a man getting next to a little
+amusement in life?" asked Kerns. "Do you object to my being happy?"
+
+"Amusement? You don't know how to amuse yourself. You don't know how to
+be happy. Here you sit, day after day, swallowing Martinis--" He paused
+to finish his own, then resumed: "Here you sit, day after day,
+intellectually stultified, unemotionally ignorant of the higher and
+better life--"
+
+"No, I don't. I've a book upstairs that tells all about that. I read it
+when I have holdovers--"
+
+"Kerns, I wish to speak seriously. I've had it on my mind ever since I
+married. May I speak frankly?"
+
+"Well, when I come back from Boston--"
+
+"Because I know a girl," interrupted Gatewood--"wait a moment,
+Tommy!"--as Kerns rose and sauntered toward the door--"you've plenty of
+time to catch your train and be civil, too! I mean to tell you about
+that girl, if you'll listen."
+
+Kerns halted and turned upon his friend a pair of eyes, unwinking in
+their placid intelligence.
+
+"I was going to say that I know a girl," continued Gatewood, "who is
+just the sort of a girl you--"
+
+"No, she isn't!" said Kerns, wheeling to resume his progress toward the
+cloakroom.
+
+"Tom!"
+
+Kerns halted.
+
+"_You're_ a fine specimen!" commented Gatewood scornfully. "You spent
+the best years of your life in persuading me to get married, and the
+first time I try to do the same for you, you make for the tall timber!"
+
+"I know it," admitted Kerns, unashamed; "I'm bashful. I'm a chipmunk for
+shyness, so I'll say good night--"
+
+"Come back," said Gatewood coldly.
+
+"But my suit case--"
+
+"You left it at the Lee's, didn't you? Well, you've time enough to go
+there, get it, make your train, and listen to me, too. Look here, Kerns,
+have you any of the elements of decency about you?"
+
+"No," said Kerns, "not a single element." He seated himself defiantly in
+the club window facing Gatewood and began to button his gloves. When he
+had finished he settled his new straw hat more comfortably on his head,
+and, leaning forward and balancing his malacca walking stick across his
+knees, gazed at Gatewood with composure.
+
+"Crank up!" he said pleasantly; "I'm going in less than three minutes."
+He pushed the electric knob as an afterthought, and when the gilt
+buttons of the club servant glimmered through the dusk, "Two more," he
+explained briskly. After a few moments' silence, broken by the tinkle of
+ice in thin glassware, Gatewood leaned forward, menacing his friend with
+an impressive forefinger:
+
+"Did you or didn't you once tell me that a decent citizen ought to
+marry?"
+
+"I did, dear friend."
+
+"Did I or didn't I do it?"
+
+"In the words of the classic, you _done_ it," admitted Kerns.
+
+"Was I or wasn't I going to the devil before I had the sense to marry?"
+persisted Gatewood.
+
+"You was! You _was_, dear friend!" said Kerns with enthusiasm. "You had
+almost went there ere I appeared and saved you."
+
+"Then why shouldn't you marry and let me save you?"
+
+"But I'm not going to the bowwows. _I'm_ all right. I'm a decent
+citizen. I awake in the rosy dawn with a song on my lips; I softly
+whistle rag time as I button my collar; I warble a few delicious vagrant
+notes as I part my sparse hair; I'm not murderous before breakfast; I go
+down town, singing, to my daily toil; I fish for fat contracts in
+Georgia marble; I return uptown immersed in a holy calm and the evening
+paper. I offer myself a cocktail; I bow and accept; I dress for dinner
+with the aid of a rascally valet, but--_do_ I swear at him? No, dear
+friend; I say, 'Henry, I have known far, far worse scoundrels than you.
+Thank you for filling up my bay rum with water. Bless you for wearing
+my imported hosiery! I deeply regret that my new shirts do not fit you,
+Henry!' And my smile is a benediction upon that wayward scullion. Then,
+dear friend, why, why do you desire to offer me up upon the altar of
+unrest? What is a little wifey to me or I to any wifey?"
+
+"Because," said Gatewood irritated, "you offered me up. I'm happy and I
+want you to be--you great, hulking, self-satisfied symbol of supreme
+self-centered selfishness--"
+
+"Oh, splash!" said Kerns feebly.
+
+"Yes, you are. What do you do all day? Grub for money and study how to
+make life agreeable to yourself! Every minute of the day you are
+occupied in having a good time! You've admitted it! You wake up singing
+like a fool canary; you wear imported hosiery; you've made a soft, warm
+wallow for yourself at this club, and here you bask your life away,
+waddling downtown to nail contracts and cut coupons, and uptown to
+dinners and theaters, only to return and sprawl here in luxury without
+one single thought for posterity. _Your_ crime is race suicide!"
+
+"I--my--_what_!"
+
+"Certainly. Some shirk taxes, some jury duty. _You_ shirk fatherhood,
+and all its happy and sacred obligations! You deny posterity! You strike
+a blow at it! You flout it! You menace the future of this Republic!
+Your inertia is a crime against the people! Instead of _pro bono
+publico_ your motto is _pro bono tempo_--for a good time! And, dog Latin
+or not, it's the truth, and our great President"
+
+"Splash!" said Kerns, rising.
+
+"I've a good mind," said Gatewood indignantly, "to put the Tracer of
+Lost Persons on your trail. He'd rope you and tie you in record time!"
+
+Kerns's smile was a provocation.
+
+"I'll do it, too!" added Gatewood, losing his temper, "if you dare give
+me the chance."
+
+"Seriously," inquired Kerns, delighted, "_do_ you think your friend, Mr.
+Keen, could encompass my matrimony against my better sense and the full
+enjoyment of my unimpaired mental faculties?"
+
+"Didn't he--fortunately for me--force me into matrimony when I had never
+seen a woman I would look at twice? Didn't you put him up to it? Very
+well, why can't I put him on your trail then? Why can't _he_ do the same
+for you?"
+
+"Try it, dear friend," retorted Kerns courteously.
+
+"Do you mean that you are not afraid? Do you mean you give me full
+liberty to set him on you? And do you realize what that means? No, you
+don't; for you haven't a notion of what that man, Westrel Keen, can
+accomplish. You haven't the slightest idea of the machinery which he
+controls with a delicacy absolutely faultless; with a perfectly
+terrifying precision. Why, man, the Pinkerton system itself has become
+merely a detail in the immense complexity of the system of control which
+the Tracer of Lost Persons exercises over this entire continent. The
+urban police, the State constabulary of Pennsylvania, the rural systems
+of surveillance, the Secret Service, all municipal, provincial, State,
+and national organizations form but a few strands in the universal web
+he has woven. Custom officials, revenue officers, the militia of the
+States, the army, the navy, the personnel of every city, State, and
+national legislative bodies form interdependent threads in the mesh he
+is master of; and, like a big beneficent spider, he sits in the center
+of his web, able to tell by the slightest tremor of any thread exactly
+where to begin investigations!"
+
+Flushed, earnest, a trifle out of breath with his own eloquence,
+Gatewood waved his hand to indicate a Ciceronian period, adding, as
+Kerns's incredulous smile broadened: "Say splash again, and I'll put you
+at his mercy!"
+
+"Ker-splash! dear friend," observed Kerns pleasantly. "If a man doesn't
+want to marry, the army, the navy, the Senate, the white wings, and the
+great White Father at Washington can't make him."
+
+"I tell you I want to see you happy!" said Gatewood angrily.
+
+"Then gaze upon me. I'm it!"
+
+"You're not! You don't know what happiness is."
+
+"Don't I? Well, I don't miss it, dear friend--"
+
+"But if you've never had it, and therefore don't miss it, it's time
+somebody found some real happiness for you. Kerns, I simply can't bear
+to see you missing so much happiness--"
+
+"Why grieve?"
+
+"Yes, I will! I do grieve--in spite of your grinning skepticism and your
+bantering attitude. See here, Tom; I've started about a thousand times
+to say that I knew a girl--"
+
+"Do you want to hear that splash again?"
+
+Gatewood grew madder. He said: "I could easily lay your case before Mr.
+Keen and have you in love and married and happy whether you like it or
+not!"
+
+"If I were not going to Boston, my son, I should enjoy your misguided
+efforts," returned Kerns blandly.
+
+"Your going to Boston makes no difference. The Tracer of Lost Persons
+doesn't care where you go or what you do. If he starts in on your case,
+Tommy, you can't escape."
+
+"You mean he can catch me now? Here? At my own club? Or on the public
+highway? Or on the classic Boston train?"
+
+"He _could_. Yes, I firmly believe he could land you before you ever saw
+the Boston State House. I tell you he can work like lightning, Kerns. I
+know it; I am so absolutely convinced of it that I--I almost hesitate--"
+
+"Don't feel delicate about it," laughed Kerns; "you may call him on the
+telephone while I go uptown and get my suit case. Perhaps I'll come back
+a blushing bridegroom; who knows?"
+
+"If you'll wait here I'll call him up now," said Gatewood grimly.
+
+"Oh, very well. Only I left my suit case in Billy's room, and it's full
+of samples of Georgia marble, and I've got to get it to the train."
+
+"You've plenty of time. If you'll wait until I talk to Mr. Keen I'll
+dine with you here. Will you?"
+
+"What? Dine in this abandoned joint with an outcast like me? Dear
+friend, are you dippy this lovely May evening?"
+
+"I'll do it if you'll wait. Will you? And I'll bet you now that I'll
+have you in love and sprinting toward the altar before we meet again at
+this club. Do you dare bet?"
+
+"The terms of the wager, kind friend?" drawled Kerns, delighted; and he
+fished out a notebook kept for such transactions.
+
+"Let me see," reflected Gatewood; "you'll need a silver service when
+you're married. . . . Well, say, forks and spoons and things against an
+imported trap gun--twelve-gauge, you know."
+
+"Done. Go and telephone to your friend, Mr. Keen." And Kerns pushed the
+electric button with a jeering laugh, and asked the servant for a dinner
+card.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Gatewood, in the telephone booth, waited impatiently for Mr. Keen; and
+after a few moments the Tracer of Lost Persons' agreeable voice sounded
+in the receiver.
+
+"It's about Mr. Kerns," began Gatewood; "I want to see him happy, and
+the idiot won't be. Now, Mr. Keen, you know what happiness you and he
+brought to me! You know what sort of an idle, selfish, aimless,
+meaningless life you saved me from? I want you to do the same for Mr.
+Kerns. I want to ask you to take up his case at once. Besides, I've a
+bet on it. Could you attend to it at once?"
+
+"To-night?" asked the Tracer, laughing.
+
+"Why--ah--well, of course, that would be impossible. I suppose--"
+
+"My profession is to overcome the impossible, Mr. Gatewood. Where is Mr.
+Kerns?"
+
+"Here, in this club, defying me and drinking cocktails. He won't get
+married, and I want you to make him do it."
+
+"Where is he spending the evening?" asked the Tracer, laughing again.
+
+"Why, he's been stopping at the Danforth Lees' in Eighty-third Street
+until the workmen at the club here finish putting new paper on his
+walls. The Lees are out of town. He left his suit case at their house
+and he's going up to get it and catch the 12.10 train for Boston."
+
+"He goes from the Lenox Club to the residence of Mr. W. Danforth Lee,
+East Eighty-third Street, to get a suit case," repeated the Tracer. "Is
+that correct?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is in the suit case?"
+
+"Samples of that new marble he's quarrying in Georgia."
+
+"Is it an old suit case? Has it Mr. Kerns's initials on it?"
+
+"Hold the wire; I'll find out."
+
+And Gatewood left the telephone and walked into the great lounging room,
+where Kerns sat twirling his stick and smiling to himself.
+
+"All over, dear friend?" inquired Kerns, starting to rise. "I've ordered
+a corking dinner."
+
+"Wait!" returned Gatewood ominously. "What sort of a suit case is that
+one you're going after?"
+
+"What sort? Oh, just an ordinary--"
+
+"Is it old or new?"
+
+"Brand new. Why?"
+
+"Is your name on it?"
+
+"No; why? Would that thicken the plot, dear friend? Or is the Tracer
+foiled, ha! ha!"
+
+Gatewood turned on his heel, went back to the telephone, and, carefully
+shutting the door of the booth, took up the receiver.
+
+"It's a new suit case, Mr. Keen," he said; "no initials on it--just an
+ordinary case."
+
+"Mr. Lee's residence is 38 East Eighty-third Street, between Madison and
+Fifth, I believe."
+
+"Yes," replied Gatewood.
+
+"And the family are out of town?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is there a caretaker there?"
+
+"No; Mr. Kerns camped there. When he leaves to-night he will send the
+key to the Burglar Alarm Company."
+
+"Very well. Please hold the wire for a while."
+
+For ten full minutes Gatewood sat gleefully cuddling the receiver
+against his ear. His faith in Mr. Keen was naturally boundless; he
+believed that whatever the Tracer attempted could not result in failure.
+He desired nothing in the world so ardently as to see Kerns safely
+married. His own happiness may have been the motive power which had set
+him in action in behalf of his friend--that and a certain indefinable
+desire to practice a species of heavenly revenge, of grateful
+retaliation upon the prime mover and _collaborateur_, if not the sole
+author, of his own wedded bliss. Kerns had made him happy.
+
+"And I'm hanged if I don't pay him off and make him happy, too!"
+muttered Gatewood. "Does he think I'm going to sit still and see him go
+tearing and gyrating about town with no responsibility, no moral check
+to his evolutions, no wholesome home duties to limit his acrobatics, no
+wife to clip his wings? It's time he had somebody to report to; time he
+assumed moral burdens and spiritual responsibilities. A man is just as
+happy when he is certain where he is going to sleep. A man can find just
+as much enjoyment in life when he feels it his duty to account for his
+movements. I don't care whether Kerns is comparatively happy or
+not--there's nothing either sacred or holy in that kind of happiness,
+and I'm not going to endure the sort of life he likes any longer!"
+
+Immersed in moral reflections, inspired by affectionate obligations to
+violently inflict happiness upon Kerns, the minutes passed very
+agreeably until the amused voice of the Tracer of Lost Persons sounded
+again in the receiver.
+
+"Mr. Gatewood?"
+
+"Yes, I am here, Mr. Keen."
+
+"Do you really think it best for Mr. Kerns to fall in love?"
+
+"I do, certainly!" replied Gatewood with emphasis.
+
+"Because," continued the Tracer of Lost Persons, "I see little chance
+for him to do otherwise if I take up this case. Fate itself, in the
+shape of a young lady, is already on the way here in a railroad train."
+
+"Good! Good!" exclaimed Gatewood. "Don't let him escape, Mr. Keen! I beg
+of you to take up his case! I urge you most seriously to do so. Mr.
+Kerns is now exactly what I was a year ago--an utterly useless member of
+the community--a typical bachelor who lives at his clubs, shirking the
+duties of a decent citizen."
+
+"_Ex_actly," said the Tracer. "Do you insist that I take this case? That
+I attempt to trace and find for Mr. Kerns a sort of happiness he himself
+has never found?"
+
+"I implore you to do so, Mr. Keen."
+
+"_Ex_actly. If I do--if I carry it out as it has been arranged--or
+rather as the case seems to have already arranged itself, for it is
+rather a simple matter, I fancy--I do not exactly see how Mr. Kerns can
+avoid experiencing a--ahem--a tender sentiment for the very charming
+young lady whom I--and chance--have designed for him as a partner
+through life."
+
+"Excellent! Splendid!" shouted Gatewood through the telephone. "Can I do
+anything to aid you in this?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Tracer, laughing. "If you can keep him amused for an
+hour or two before he goes after his suit case it might make it easier
+for me. This young lady is due to arrive in New York at eight o'clock--a
+client of mine--coming to consult me. Her presence plays an important
+part in Mr. Kerns's future. I wish you to detain Mr. Kerns until she is
+ready to receive him. But of this he must know nothing. Good-by, Mr.
+Gatewood, and would you be kind enough to present my compliments to Mrs.
+Gatewood?"
+
+"Indeed I will! We never can forget what you have done for us. Good-by."
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Gatewood. Try to keep Mr. Kerns amused for two or three
+hours. Of course, if you can't do this, there are other methods I may
+employ--a dozen other plans already partly outlined in my mind; but the
+present plan, which accident and coincidence make so easy, is likely to
+work itself out to your entire satisfaction within a few hours. We are
+already weaving a web around Mr. Kerns; we already have taken exclusive
+charge of his future movements after he leaves the Lenox Club. I do not
+believe he can escape us, or his charming destiny. Good night!"
+
+Gatewood, enchanted, hung up the receiver. Song broke softly from his
+lips as he started in search of Kerns; his step was springy,
+buoyant--sort of subdued and modest prance.
+
+"Now," he said to himself, "Tommy must take out his papers. The time is
+ended when he can issue letters of marque to himself, hoist sail, square
+away, and go cruising all over this metropolis at his own sweet will."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+In the meanwhile, at the other end of the wire, Mr. Keen, the Tracer of
+Lost Persons, was preparing to trace for Mr. Kerns, against that
+gentleman's will, the true happiness which Mr. Kerns had never been able
+to find for himself.
+
+He sat in his easy chair within the four walls of his own office,
+inspecting a line of people who stood before him on the carpet forming a
+single and attentive rank. In this rank were five men: a policeman, a
+cab driver, an agent of the telephone company, an agent of the electric
+company, and a reformed burglar carrying a kit of his trade tools.
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons gazed at them, meditatively joining the tips
+of his thin fingers.
+
+"I want the number on 36 East Eighty-third Street changed to No. 38, and
+the number 38 replaced by No. 36," he said to the policeman. "I want it
+done at once. Get a glazier and go up there and have it finished in an
+hour. Mrs. Kenna, caretaker at No. 36, is in my pay; she will not
+interfere. There is nobody in No. 38: Mr. Kerns leaves there to-night
+and the Burglar Alarm Company takes charge to-morrow."
+
+And, turning to the others: "You," nodding at the reformed burglar,
+"know your duty. Mike!" to the cab driver, "don't miss Mr. Kerns at the
+Lenox Club. If he calls you before eleven, drive into the park and have
+an accident. And you," to the agent of the telephone company, "will
+sever all telephone connection in Mrs. Stanley's house; and you," to the
+official of the electric company, "will see that the circuit in Mrs.
+Stanley's house is cut so that no electric light may be lighted and no
+electric bell sound."
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons stroked his gray mustache thoughtfully. "And
+that," he ended, "will do, I think. Good night."
+
+He rose and stood by the door as the policeman headed the solemn file
+which marched out to their duty; then he looked at his watch, and, as it
+was already a few minutes after eight, he called up No. 36 East
+Eighty-third Street, and in a moment more had Mrs. Stanley on the wire.
+
+"Good evening," he said pleasantly. "I suppose you have just arrived
+from Rosylyn. I may be a little late--I may be very late, in fact, so I
+called you up to say so. And I wished to say another thing; to ask you
+whether your servants could recollect ever having seen a young man
+about the place, a rather attractive young man with excellent address
+and manners, five feet eleven inches, slim but well built, dark hair,
+dark eyes, and dark mustache, offering samples of Georgia marble for
+sale."
+
+"Really, Mr. Keen," replied a silvery voice, "I have heard them say
+nothing about such an individual. If you will hold the wire I will ask
+my maid." And, after a pause: "No, Mr. Keen, my maid cannot remember any
+such person. Do you think he was a confederate of that wretched butler
+of mine?"
+
+"I am scarcely prepared to say that; in fact," added Mr. Keen, "I
+haven't the slightest idea that this young man could have been concerned
+in anything of that sort. Only, if you should ever by any chance see
+such a man, detain him if possible until you can communicate with me;
+detain him by any pretext, by ruse, by force if you can, only detain him
+until I can get there. Will you do this?"
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Keen, if I can. Please describe him again?"
+
+Mr. Keen did so minutely.
+
+"You say he sells Georgia marble by samples, which he carries in a suit
+case?"
+
+"He _says_ that he has samples of Georgia marble in his suit case,"
+replied the Tracer cautiously. "It might be well, if possible, to see
+what he has in his suit case."
+
+"I will warn the servants as soon as I return to Rosylyn. When may I
+expect you this evening, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"It is impossible to say, Mrs. Stanley. If I am not there by midnight I
+shall try to call next morning."
+
+So they exchanged civil adieus; the Tracer hung up his receiver and
+leaned back in his chair, smiling to himself.
+
+"Curious," he said, "that chance should have sent that pretty woman to
+me at such a time. . . . Kerns _is_ a fine fellow, every inch of him. It
+hit him hard when he crossed with her to Southampton six years ago; it
+hit him harder when she married that Englishman. I don't wonder he never
+cared to marry after that brief week of her society; for she is just
+about the most charming woman I have ever met--red hair and all. . . .
+And if quick action is what is required, it's well to break the ice
+between them at once with a dreadful misunderstanding."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The dinner that Kerns had planned for himself and Gatewood was an
+ingenious one, cunningly contrived to discontent Gatewood with home fare
+and lure him by its seductive quality into frequent revisits to the club
+which was responsible for such delectable wines and viands.
+
+A genial glow already enveloped Gatewood and pleasantly suffused Kerns.
+From time to time they held some rare vintage aloft, squinting through
+the crystal-imprisoned crimson with deep content.
+
+"Not that _my_ word is necessarily the _last_ word concerning Burgundy,"
+said Gatewood modestly; "but I venture to doubt that any club in America
+can match this bottle, Kerns."
+
+"Now, Jack," wheedled Kerns, "isn't it pleasant to dine here once in a
+while? Be frank, man! Look about at the other tables--at all the
+pleasant, familiar faces--the same fine fellows, bless 'em--the same
+smoky old ceiling, the same bum portraits of dead governors, the same
+old stag heads on the wall. Now, Jack, isn't it mighty pleasant, after
+all? Be a gentleman and admit it!"
+
+"Y-yes," confessed Gatewood, "it's all right for me once in a while,
+because I know that I am presently going back to my own home--a jolly
+lamplit room and the prettiest girl in Manhattan curled up in an
+armchair--"
+
+"You're fortunate," said Kerns shortly. And for the first time there
+remained no lurking mockery in his voice; for the first time his retort
+was tinged with bitterness. But the next instant his eyes glimmered with
+the same gay malice, and the unbelieving smile twitched at his clean-cut
+lips, and he raised his hand, touching the short ends of his mustache
+with that careless, amused cynicism which rather became him.
+
+"All that you picture so entrancingly is forbidden the true believer,"
+he said; and began to repeat:
+
+    "'O weaver! weave the flowers of Feraghan
+    Into the fabric that thy birth began;
+    Iris, narcissus, tulips cloud-band tied,
+    These thou shalt picture for the eye of Man;
+    Henna, Herati, and the Jhelums tide
+    In Sarraband and Saruk be thy guide,
+    And the red dye of Ispahan beside
+    The checkered Chinese fret of ancient gold;
+    --So heed the ban, old as the law is old,
+    Nor weave into thy warp the laughing face,
+    Nor limb, nor body, nor one line of grace,
+    Nor hint, nor tint, nor any veiled device
+    Of Woman who is barred from Paradise!'"
+
+"A nice sentiment!" said Gatewood hotly.
+
+"Can't help it; you see I'm forbidden to monkey with the eternal looms
+or weave the forbidden into the pattern of my life."
+
+Gatewood sat silent for a moment, then looked up at Kerns with something
+so closely akin to a grin that his friend became interested in its
+scarcely veiled significance, and grinned in reply.
+
+"So you really expect that your friend, Mr. Keen, is going to marry me
+to somebody, _nolens volens_?" asked Kerns.
+
+"I do. That's what I dream of, Tommy."
+
+"My poor friend, dream on!"
+
+"I am. Tommy, you're lost! I mean you're as good as married now!"
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I _know_ it! There you sit, savoring your Burgundy, idling over a
+cigar, happy, care free, fancy free, at liberty, as you believe, to roam
+off anywhere at any time and continue the eternal hunt for pleasure!
+That's what you _think_! Ha! Tommy, I know better! That's not the sort
+of man _I_ see sitting on the same chair where you are now sprawling in
+such content! I see a doomed man, already in the shadow of the altar,
+wasting his time unsuspiciously while Chance comes whirling into the
+city behind a Long Island locomotive, and Fate, the footman, sits
+outside ready to follow him, and Destiny awaits him no matter what he
+does, what he desires, where he goes, wherever he turns to-night!
+Destiny awaits him at his journey's end!"
+
+"Very fine," said Kerns admiringly. "Too bad it's due to the Burgundy."
+
+"Never mind what my eloquence is due to," retorted Gatewood, "the fact
+remains that this is probably your last bachelor dinner. Kerns, old
+fellow! Here's to her! Bless her! I--I wish sincerely that we knew who
+she is and where to send those roses. Anyway, here's to the bride!"
+
+He stood up very gravely and drank the toast, then, reseating himself,
+tapped the empty glass gently against the table's edge until it broke.
+
+"You are certainly doing your part well," said Kerns admiringly. Then he
+swallowed the remainder of his Burgundy and looked up at the club clock.
+
+"Eleven," he said with regret. "I've about time to go to Eighty-third
+Street, get my suit case, and catch my train at 125th Street." To a
+servant he said, "Call a hansom," then rose and sauntered downstairs to
+the cloakroom, where presently both men stood, hatted and gloved,
+swinging their sticks.
+
+"That was a fool bet you made," began Kerns; "I'll release you, Jack."
+
+"Sorry, but I must insist on holding you," replied Gatewood, laughing.
+"You're going to your doom. Come on! I'll see you as far as the cab
+door."
+
+They walked out, and Kerns gave the cabby the street and number and
+entered the hansom.
+
+"Now," said Gatewood, "you're in for it! You're done for! You can't help
+yourself! I've won my twelve-gauge trap gun already, and I'll have to
+set you up in table silver, anyway, so it's an even break. You're all
+in, Tommy! The Tracer is on your trail!"
+
+In the beginning of a flippant retort Kerns experienced a curious
+sensation of hesitation. Something in Gatewood's earnestness, in his
+jeering assurance and delighted certainty, made him, for one moment,
+feel doubtful, even uncomfortable.
+
+"What nonsense you talk," he said, recovering his equanimity. "Nothing
+on earth can prevent me driving to 38 East Eighty-third Street, getting
+my luggage, and taking the Boston express. Your Tracer doesn't intend to
+stop my hansom and drag me into a cave, does he? You haven't put
+knock-outs into that Burgundy, have you? Then what in the dickens are
+you laughing at?"
+
+But Gatewood, on the sidewalk under the lamplight, was still laughing as
+Kerns drove away, for he had recognized in the cab driver a man he had
+seen in Mr. Kern's office, and he knew that the Tracer of Lost Persons
+had Kerns already well in hand.
+
+The hansom drove on through the summer darkness between rows of electric
+globes drooping like huge white moon flowers from their foliated bronze
+stalks, on up the splendid avenue, past the great brilliantly
+illuminated hotels, past the white cathedral, past clubs and churches
+and the palaces of the wealthy; on, on along the park wall edged by its
+double rows of elms under which shadowy forms moved--lovers strolling in
+couples.
+
+"Pooh," sniffed Kerns, "the whole world has gone love mad, and I'm the
+only sane man left."
+
+But he leaned back in his cab and fell a-thinking of a thin girl with
+red hair and great gray eyes--a thin, frail creature, scarcely more than
+a child, who had held him for a week in a strange sorcery only to
+release him with a frightened smile, leaving her indelible impression
+upon his life forever.
+
+And, thinking, he looked up, realizing that the cab had stopped in East
+Eighty-third Street before one of a line of brownstone houses, all
+externally alike.
+
+Then he leaned out and saw that the house number was thirty-eight. That
+was the number of the Lees' house; he descended, bade the cabman await
+him, and, producing his latch key, started up the steps, whistling
+gayly.
+
+But he didn't require his key, for, as he reached the front door, he
+found, to his surprise and concern, that it swung partly open--just a
+mere crack.
+
+"The mischief!" he muttered; "could I have failed to close it? Could
+anybody have seen it and crept in?"
+
+He entered the hallway hastily and pressed the electric knob. No light
+appeared in the sconces.
+
+"What the deuce!" he murmured; "something wrong with the switch!" And he
+hurriedly lighted a match and peered into the darkness. By the vague
+glimmer of the burning match he could distinguish nothing. He listened
+intently, tried the electric switch again without success. The match
+burned his fingers and he dropped it, watching the last red spark die
+out in the darkness.
+
+Something about the shadowy hallway seemed unfamiliar; he went to the
+door, stepped out on the stoop, and looked up at the number on the
+transom. It was thirty-eight; no doubt about the house. Hesitating, he
+glanced around to see that his hansom was still there. It had
+disappeared.
+
+"What an idiot that cabman is!" he exclaimed, intensely annoyed at the
+prospect of lugging his heavy suit case to a Madison Avenue car and
+traveling with it to Harlem.
+
+He looked up and down the dimly lighted street; east, an electric car
+glided down Madison Avenue; west, the lights of Fifth Avenue glimmered
+against the dark foliage of the Park. He stood a moment, angry at the
+desertion of his cabman, then turned and reëntered the dark hall,
+closing the door behind him.
+
+Up the staircase he felt his way to the first landing, and, lighting a
+match, looked for the electric button.
+
+"Am I crazy, or was there no electric button in this hall?" he thought.
+The match burned low; he had to drop it. Perplexed, he struck another
+match and opened the door leading into the front room, and stood on the
+threshold a moment, looking about him at the linen-shrouded furniture
+and pictures. This front room, closed for the summer, he had not before
+entered, but he stepped in now, poking about for any possible intruder,
+lighting match after match.
+
+"I suppose I ought to go over this confounded house inch by inch," he
+murmured. "What could have possessed me to leave the front door ajar
+this morning?"
+
+For an instant he thought that perhaps Mrs. Nolan, the woman who came in
+the morning to make his bed, might have left the door open, but he knew
+that couldn't be so, because he always waited for her to finish her work
+and leave before he went out. So either he must have left the door open,
+or some marauder had visited the house--was perhaps at that moment in
+the house! And it was his duty to find out.
+
+"I'd better be about it, too," he thought savagely, "or I'll never make
+my train."
+
+He struck his last match, looked around, and, seeing gas jets among the
+clustered electric bulbs of the sconces, tried to light one and
+succeeded.
+
+He had left his suit case in the passageway between the front and rear
+rooms, and now, cautiously, stick in hand, he turned toward the dim
+corridor leading to the bedroom. There was his suit case, anyway! He
+picked it up and started to push open the door of the rear room; but at
+the same time, and before he could lay his hand on the knob, the door
+before him opened suddenly in a flood of light, and a woman stood there,
+dark against the gas-lit glare, a pistol waveringly extended in the
+general direction of his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+"Good heavens!" he said, appalled, and dropped his suit case with a
+crash.
+
+"W-what are you d-doing--" She controlled her voice and the wavering
+weapon with an effort. "What are you doing in this house?"
+
+"Doing? In _this_ house?" he repeated, his eyes protruding in the
+direction of the unsteady pistol muzzle. "What are _you_ doing in this
+house--if you don't mind saying!"
+
+"I--I m-must ask you to put up your hands," she said. "If you move I
+shall certainly s-shoot off this pistol."
+
+"It will go off, anyway, if you handle it like that!" he said,
+exasperated. "What do you mean by pointing it at me?"
+
+"I mean to fire it off in a few moments if you don't raise your hands
+above your head!"
+
+He looked at the pistol; it was new and shiny; he looked at the athletic
+young figure silhouetted against the brilliant light.
+
+"Well, if you make a point of it, of course." He slowly held up both
+hands, higher, then higher still. "Upon my word!" he breathed. "Held up
+by a woman!" And he said aloud, bitterly: "No doubt you have assistance
+close at hand."
+
+"No doubt," she said coolly. "What have you been packing into that
+valise?"
+
+"P-packing into _what_? Oh, into that suit case? That is my suit case."
+
+"Of course it is," she said quietly, "but what have you inside it?"
+
+"Nothing _you_ or your friends would care for," he said meaningly.
+
+"I must be the judge of that," she retorted. "Please open that suit
+case."
+
+"How can I if my hands are in the air?" he expostulated, now intensely
+interested in the novelty of being held up by this graceful and vaguely
+pretty silhouette.
+
+"You may lower your arms to unpack the suit case," she said.
+
+"I--I had rather not if you are going to keep me covered with your
+pistol."
+
+"Of course I shall keep you covered. Unpack your booty at once!"
+
+"My--_what_?"
+
+"Booty."
+
+"Madam, do you take _me_ for a thief? Have you, by chance, entered the
+wrong house? I--I cannot reconcile your voice with what I am forced to
+consider you--a housebreaker--"
+
+"We will discuss that later. Unpack that bag!" she insisted.
+
+"But--but there is nothing in it except samples of marble--"
+
+"What!" she exclaimed nervously. "_What_ did you say? Samples of
+_marble_?"
+
+"Marble, madam! Georgia marble!"
+
+"Oh! So _you_ are the young man who goes about pretending to peddle
+Georgia marble from samples! Are you? The famous marble man I have heard
+of."
+
+"I? Madam, I don't know what you mean!"
+
+"Come!" she said scornfully; "let me see the contents of that suit case.
+I--I am not afraid of you; I am not a bit afraid of you. And I shall
+catch your accomplice, too."
+
+"Madam, you speak like an honest woman! You _must_ have managed to enter
+the wrong house. This is number thirty-eight, where I live."
+
+"It is number thirty-six; my house!"
+
+"But I _know_ it is number thirty-eight; Mr. Lee's house," he protested
+hopefully. "This is some dreadful mistake."
+
+"Mr. Lee's house is next door," she said. "Do you not suppose I know my
+own house? Besides, I have been warned against a plausible young man who
+pretends he has Georgia marble to sell--"
+
+"There is a dreadful mistake somewhere," he insisted. "Please p-p-put up
+your p-pistol and aid me to solve it. I am no robber, madam. I thought
+at first that you were. I'm living in Mr. Lee's house, No. 38 East
+Eighty-third Street, and I've looked carefully at the number over the
+door of this house and the number is thirty-eight, and the street is
+East Eighty-third. So I naturally conclude that I am in Mr. Lee's
+house."
+
+"Your arguments and your conclusions are very plausible," she said,
+"but, fortunately for me, I have been expressly warned against a young
+man of your description. _You_ are the marble man!"
+
+"It's a mistake! A very dreadful one."
+
+"Then how did you enter this house?"
+
+"I have a key--I mean I found the front door unlatched. Please don't
+misunderstand me; I know it sounds unconvincing, but I really have a key
+to number thirty-eight."
+
+He attempted to reach for his pocket and the pistol glittered in his
+face.
+
+"Won't you let me prove my innocence?" he asked.
+
+"You can't prove it by showing me a key. Besides, it's probably a
+weapon. Anyhow, if, as you pretend, you have managed to get into the
+wrong house, why did you bring that suit case up here?"
+
+"It was here. It's mine. I left it here in this passageway."
+
+"In _my_ house?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"In number thirty-eight; that is all I know. I'll open the suit case if
+you will let me. I have already described its contents. If it has
+samples of marble in it you _must_ be convinced!"
+
+"It will convince me that it is your valise. But what of that? I know it
+is yours already," she said defiantly. "I know, at least, that you are
+the marble man--if nothing worse!"
+
+"But malefactors don't go about carrying samples of Georgia marble," he
+protested, dropping on one knee under the muzzle of her revolver and
+tugging at the straps and buckles. In a second or two he threw open the
+case--and the sight of the contents staggered him. For there, thrown in
+pellmell among small square blocks of polished marble was a complete kit
+of burglar's tools, including also a mask, a dark lantern, and a
+blackjack.
+
+"What--w--w--what on earth is this?" he stammered. "These things don't
+belong to me. I won't have them! I don't want them. Who put them into my
+suit case? How the deuce--"
+
+"You _are_ the marble man!" she said with a shudder. "Your crimes are
+known! Your wretched accomplice will be caught! You are the marble
+man--or something worse!"
+
+Kneeling there, aghast, bewildered, he passed his hand across his eyes
+as though to clear them from some terrible vision. But the suit case was
+still there with its incriminating contents when he looked again.
+
+"I am sorry for you," she said tremulously. "I--if it were not for the
+marble--I would let you go. But you are the marble man!"
+
+"Yes, and I'm probably a madman, too. I don't know what I am! I don't
+know what is happening to me. I ought to be going, that is all I know--"
+
+"I cannot let you go."
+
+"But I must! I've got to catch a train."
+
+The feebleness of his excuse chilled her pity.
+
+"I shall not let you go," she said, resting the hand which held the
+pistol on her hip, but keeping him covered. "I know you came to rob my
+house; I know you are a thoroughly bad and depraved young man, but for
+all that I could find it in my heart to let you go if you were not also
+the _marble man_!"
+
+"What on earth is the marble man?" he asked, exasperated.
+
+"I don't know. I have been earnestly warned against him. Probably he is
+a relative of my butler--"
+
+"I'm not a relative of anybody's butler!"
+
+"You _say_ you are not. How do I know? I--I will make you an offer. I
+will give you one last chance. If you will return to me the jewels that
+my butler took--"
+
+"Good heavens, madam! Do you really take me for a professional burglar?"
+
+"How can I help it?" she said indignantly. "Look at your suit case full
+of lanterns and masks--full of _marble_, too!"
+
+Speechless, he stared at the burglar's kit.
+
+"I am sorry--" Her voice had altered again to a tremulous sweetness. "I
+can't help feeling sorry for you. You do not seem to be hardened; your
+voice and manner are not characteristically criminal. I--I can't see
+your face very clearly, but it does not seem to be a brutally inhuman
+face--"
+
+An awful desire to laugh seized Kerns; he struggled against it;
+hysteria lay that way; and he covered his face with both hands and
+pinched himself.
+
+She probably mistook the action for the emotion of shame and despair
+born of bitter grief; perhaps of terror of the law. It frightened her a
+little, but pity dominated. She could scarcely endure to do what she
+must do.
+
+"This is dreadful, dreadful!" she faltered. "If you only would give me
+back my jewels--"
+
+Sounds, hastily smothered, escaped him. She believed them to be groans,
+and it made her slightly faint.
+
+"I--I've simply got to telephone for the police," she said pityingly. "I
+must ask you to sit down there and wait--there is a chair. Sit
+there--and please don't move, for I--this has unnerved me--I am not
+accustomed to doing cruel things; and if you should move too quickly or
+attempt to run away I feel certain that this pistol would explode."
+
+"Are you going to telephone?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+She backed away, cautiously, pistol menacing him, reached for the
+receiver, and waited for Central. She waited a long time before she
+realized that the telephone as well as the electric light was out of
+commission.
+
+"Did _you_ cut all these wires?" she demanded angrily.
+
+"I? What wires?"
+
+She reached out and pressed the electric button which should have rung a
+bell in her maid's bedroom on the top floor. She kept her finger on the
+button for ten minutes. It was useless.
+
+"You laid deliberate plans to rob this house," she said, her cheeks pink
+with indignation. "I am not a bit sorry for you. I shall _not_ let you
+go! I shall sit here until somebody comes to my assistance, if I have to
+sit here for weeks and weeks!"
+
+"If you'd let me telephone to my club--" he began.
+
+"Your club! You are very plausible. You didn't offer to call up any club
+until you found that the telephone was not working!"
+
+He thought a moment. "I don't suppose you would trust me to go out and
+get a policeman?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Or go into the front room and open a window and summon some passer-by?"
+
+"How do I know you haven't confederates waiting outside?"
+
+"That's true," he said seriously.
+
+There was a silence. Her nerves seemed to trouble her, for she began to
+pace to and fro in front of the passageway where he sat comfortably on
+his chair, arms folded, one knee dropped over the other.
+
+The light being behind her he could not as yet distinguish her features
+very clearly. Her figure was youthful, slender, yet beautifully rounded;
+her head charming in contour. He watched her restlessly walking on the
+floor, small hand clutching the pistol resting on her hip.
+
+The ruddy burnished glimmer on the edges of her hair he supposed, at
+first, was caused by the strong light behind her.
+
+"This is atrocious!" she murmured, halting to confront him. "How dared
+you sever every electric connection in my house?"
+
+As she spoke she stepped backward a pace or two, resting herself for a
+moment against the footboard of the bed--full in the gaslight. And he
+saw her face.
+
+For a moment he studied her; an immense wave of incredulity swept over
+him--of wild unbelief, slowly changing to the astonishment of dawning
+conviction. Astounded, silent, he stared at her from his shadowy corner;
+and after a while his pulses began to throb and throb and hammer, and
+the clamoring confusion of his senses seemed to deafen him.
+
+[Illustration: "'This is atrocious,' she murmured, halting to confront
+him."]
+
+She rested a moment or two against the footboard of the bed, her big
+gray eyes fixed on his vague and shadowy form.
+
+"This won't do," she said.
+
+"No," he said, "it won't do."
+
+He spoke very quietly, very gently. She detected the alteration in his
+voice and started slightly, as though the distant echo of a familiar
+voice had sounded.
+
+"What did you say?" she asked, coming nearer, pistol glittering in
+advance.
+
+"I said 'It won't do.' I don't know what I meant by it. If I meant
+anything I was wrong. It _will_ do. The situation is perfectly agreeable
+to me."
+
+"Insolence will not help you," she said sharply. And under the sharpness
+he detected the slightest quaver of a new alarm.
+
+"I am going to free myself," he said coolly.
+
+"If you move I shall certainly shoot!" she retorted.
+
+"I am going to move--but only my lips. I have only to move my lips to
+free myself."
+
+"I should scarcely advise you to trust to your eloquence. I have been
+duly warned, you see."
+
+"Who warned you?" he asked curiously. And, as she disdained to reply:
+"Never mind. We can clear that up later. Now let me ask you something."
+
+"You are scarcely in a position to ask questions," she said.
+
+"May I not speak to you?"
+
+"Is it necessary?"
+
+He thought a moment. "No, not necessary. Nothing is in this life, you
+know. I thought differently once. Once--when I was younger--six years
+younger--I thought happiness was necessary. I found that a man might
+live without it."
+
+She stood gazing at him through the shadows, pistol on hip.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked.
+
+"I mean that happiness is not necessary to life. Life goes on all the
+same. My life has continued for six years without that happiness which
+some believe to be essential."
+
+After a silence she said: "I can tell by the way you speak that you are
+well born. I--I dread to do what I simply must do."
+
+He, too, sat silent a long time--long enough for an utterly perverse and
+whimsical humor to take complete possession of him.
+
+"_Won't_ you let me go--_this_ time?" he pleaded.
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"You had better let me go while you can," he said, "because, perhaps,
+you may find it difficult to get rid of me later."
+
+Affronted, she shrank back from the doorway and stood in the center of
+her room, angry, disdainful, beautiful, under the ruddy glory of her
+lustrous hair.
+
+His perverse mood changed, too; he leaned forward, studying her
+minutely--the splendid gray eyes, the delicate mouth and nose, the full,
+sweet lips, the witchery of wrist and hand, and the flowing, rounded
+outline of limb and body under the pretty gown. Could this be _she_?
+This lovely, mature woman, wearing scarcely a trace of the young girl he
+had never forgotten--scarcely a trace save in the beauty of her eyes and
+hair--save in the full, red mouth, sweet and sensitive even in its
+sudden sullenness?
+
+"Once," he said, and his voice sounded to him like voices heard in
+dreams--"once, years and years ago, there was a steamer, and a man and a
+young girl on board. Do you mind my telling you about it?"
+
+She stood leaning against the footboard of the bed, not even deigning to
+raise her eyes in reply. So he made the slightest stir in his chair; and
+then she looked up quickly enough, pistol poised.
+
+"The steamer," said Kerns slowly, "was coming into Southampton--six
+years ago. On deck these two people stood--a man of twenty-eight, a girl
+of eighteen--six years ago. The name of the steamer was the _Carnatic_.
+Did you ever hear of that ship?"
+
+She was looking at him attentively. He waited for her reply; she made
+none; and he went on.
+
+"The man had asked the girl something--I don't know what--I don't know
+why her gray eyes filled with tears. Perhaps it was because she could
+not do what the man asked her to do. It may have been to love him; it
+may have been that he was asking her to marry him and that she couldn't.
+Perhaps that is why there were tears in her eyes--because she may have
+been sorry to cause him the pain of refusal--sorry, perhaps, perhaps a
+little guilty. Because she must have seen that he was falling in love
+with her, and she--she let him--knowing all the time that she was to
+marry another man. Did you ever hear of that man before?"
+
+She had straightened up, quivering, wide eyed, lips parted. He rose and
+walked slowly into her room, confronting her under the full glare of
+light.
+
+Her pistol fell clattering to the floor. It did not explode because it
+was not loaded.
+
+"Now," he said unsteadily, "will you give me my freedom? I have waited
+for it--not minutes--but years--six years. I ask it now--the freedom I
+enjoyed before I ever saw you. Can you give it back to me? Can you
+restore to me a capacity for happiness? Can you give me a heart to love
+with--love some woman, as other men love? Is it very much I ask of
+you--to give me a chance in life--the chance I had before I ever saw
+you?"
+
+Her big gray eyes seemed fascinated; he looked deep into them, smiling;
+and she turned white.
+
+"Will you give me what I ask?" he said, still smiling.
+
+She strove to speak; she could not, but her eyes never faltered.
+Suddenly the color flooded her neck and cheeks to the hair, and the
+quick tears glimmered.
+
+"I--I did not understand; I was too young to be cruel," she faltered.
+"How could I know what I was doing? Or what--what you did?"
+
+"I? To _you_?"
+
+"Y-yes. Did you think that I escaped heart free? Do you realize what
+_my_ punishment was--to--to marry--and _remember_! If I was too young,
+too inexperienced to know what I was doing, I was not too young to
+suffer for it!"
+
+"You mean--" He strove to control his voice, but the sweet, fearless
+gray eyes met his; the old flame leaped in his veins. He reached out to
+steady himself and his hand touched hers--that soft, white hand that had
+held him all these years in the hollow of its palm.
+
+"Did you _ever_ love me?" he demanded.
+
+Her eyes, wet with tears, met his straight as the starry gaze of a
+child.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+His hand tightened over hers; she swayed a moment, quivering from head
+to foot; then drawing a quick, sobbing breath, closed her eyes,
+imprisoned in his arms; and, after a long while, aroused, she looked up
+at him, her divine eyes unclosing dreamily.
+
+"Somebody is hammering at the front door," he breathed. "Listen!"
+
+"I hear. I believe it must be the Tracer of Lost Persons."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Only a Mr. Keen."
+
+"O Lord!" said Kerns faintly, and covered his face with her fragrant
+hands.
+
+Very tenderly, very gravely, she drew her hands away, and, laying them
+on his shoulders, looked up at him.
+
+"You--you know what there is in your suit case," she faltered; "_are_
+you a burglar, dear?"
+
+"Ask the Tracer of Lost Persons," said Kerns gently, "what sort of a
+criminal I am!"
+
+They stood together for one blissful moment listening to the loud
+knocking below, then, hand in hand, they descended the dark stairway to
+admit the Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+On the thirteenth day of March, 1906, Kerns received the following cable
+from an old friend:
+
+     "Is there anybody in New York who can find two criminals for me? I
+     don't want to call in the police.
+
+     "J.T. BURKE."
+
+To which Kerns replied promptly:
+
+     "Wire Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, N.Y."
+
+And a day or two later, being on his honeymoon, he forgot all about his
+old friend Jack Burke.
+
+On the fifteenth day of March, 1906, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons,
+received the following cablegram from Alexandria, Egypt:
+
+     "_Keen, Tracer, New York:_--Locate Joram Smiles, forty, stout,
+     lame, red hair, ragged red mustache, cast in left eye, pallid skin;
+     carries one crutch; supposed to have arrived in America per S. S.
+     _Scythian Queen_, with man known as Emanuel Gandon, swarthy, short,
+     fat, light bluish eyes, Eurasian type.
+
+     "I will call on you at your office as soon as my steamer, _Empress
+     of Babylon_, arrives. If you discover my men, keep them under
+     surveillance, but on no account call in police. Spare no expense.
+     Dundas, Gray & Co. are my bankers and reference.
+
+     "JOHN TEMPLETON BURKE."
+
+On Monday, April 2d, a few minutes after eight o'clock in the morning,
+the card of Mr. John Templeton Burke was brought to Mr. Keen, Tracer of
+Lost Persons, and a moment later a well-built, wiry, sun-scorched young
+man was ushered into Mr. Keen's private office by a stenographer
+prepared to take minutes of the interview.
+
+The first thing that the Tracer of Lost Persons noted in his visitor was
+his mouth; the next his eyes. Both were unmistakably good--the eyes
+which his Creator had given him looked people squarely in the face at
+every word; the mouth, which a man's own character fashions agreeably or
+mars, was pleasant, but firm when the trace of the smile lurking in the
+corners died out.
+
+There were dozens of other external characteristics which Mr. Keen
+always looked for in his clients; and now the rapid exchange of
+preliminary glances appeared to satisfy both men, for they advanced
+toward each other and exchanged a formal hand clasp.
+
+"Have you any news for me?" asked Burke.
+
+"I have," said the Tracer. "There are cigars on the table beside
+you--matches in that silver case. No, I never smoke; but I like the
+aroma--and I like to watch men smoke. Do you know, Mr. Burke, that no
+two men smoke in the same fashion? There is as much character in the
+manner of holding a cigar as there is difference in the technic of
+artists."
+
+Burke nodded, amused, but, catching sight of the busy stenographer, his
+bronzed features became serious, and he looked at Mr. Keen inquiringly.
+
+"It is my custom," said the Tracer. "Do you object to my stenographer?"
+
+Burke looked at the slim young girl in her black gown and white collar
+and cuffs. Then, very simply, he asked her pardon for objecting to her
+presence, but said that he could not discuss his case if she remained.
+So she rose, with a humorous glance at Mr. Keen; and the two men stood
+up until she had vanished, then reseated themselves _vis-a-vis_. Mr.
+Keen calmly dropped his elbow on the concealed button which prepared a
+hidden phonograph for the reception of every word that passed between
+them.
+
+"What news have you for me, Mr. Keen?" asked the younger man with that
+same directness which the Tracer had already been prepared for, and
+which only corroborated the frankness of eyes and voice.
+
+"My news is brief," he said. "I have both your men under observation."
+
+"Already?" exclaimed Burke, plainly unprepared. "Do you actually mean
+that I can see these men whenever I desire to do so? Are these
+scoundrels in this town--within pistol shot?"
+
+His youthful face hardened as he snapped out his last word, like the
+crack of a whip.
+
+"I don't know how far your pistol carries," said Mr. Keen. "Do you wish
+to swear out a warrant?"
+
+"No, I do not. I merely wish their addresses. You have not used the
+police in this matter, have you, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"No. Your cable was explicit," said the Tracer. "Had you permitted me to
+use the police it would have been much less expensive for you."
+
+"I can't help that," said the young man. "Besides, in a matter of this
+sort, a man cannot decently consider expense."
+
+"A matter of what sort?" asked the Tracer blandly.
+
+"Of _this_ sort."
+
+"Oh! Yet even now I do not understand. You must remember, Mr. Burke,
+that you have not told me anything concerning the reasons for your quest
+of these two men, Joram Smiles and Emanuel Gandon. Besides, this is the
+first time you have mentioned pistol range."
+
+Burke, smoking steadily, looked at the Tracer through the blue fog of
+his cigar.
+
+"No," he said, "I have not told you anything about them."
+
+Mr. Keen waited a moment; then, smiling quietly to himself, he wrote
+down the present addresses of Joram Smiles and Emanuel Gandon, and,
+tearing off the leaf, handed it to the younger man, saying: "I omit the
+pistol range, Mr. Burke."
+
+"I am very grateful to you," said Burke. "The efficiency of your system
+is too famous for me to venture to praise it. All I can say is 'Thank
+you'; all I can do in gratitude is to write my check--if you will be
+kind enough to suggest the figures."
+
+"Are you sure that my services are ended?"
+
+"Thank you, quite sure."
+
+So the Tracer of Lost Persons named the figures, and his client produced
+a check book and filled in a check for the amount. This was presented
+and received with pleasant formality. Burke rose, prepared to take his
+leave, but the Tracer was apparently busy with the combination lock of a
+safe, and the young man lingered a moment to make his adieus.
+
+As he stood waiting for the Tracer to turn around he studied the writing
+on the sheet of paper which he held toward the light:
+
+     Joram Smiles, no profession, 613 West 24th Street. Emanuel Gandon,
+     no profession, same address. Very dangerous men.
+
+It occurred to him that these three lines of pencil-writing had cost him
+a thousand dollars--and at the same instant he flushed with shame at the
+idea of measuring the money value of anything in such a quest as this.
+
+And yet--and yet he had already spent a great deal of money in his brief
+quest, and--_was_ he any nearer the goal--even with the penciled
+addresses of these two men in his possession? Even with these men almost
+within pistol shot!
+
+Pondering there, immersed in frowning retrospection, the room, the
+Tracer, the city seemed to fade from his view. He saw the red sand
+blowing in the desert; he heard the sickly squealing of camels at the El
+Teb Wells; he saw the sun strike fire from the rippling waters of Saïs;
+he saw the plain, and the ruins high above it; and the odor of the Long
+Bazaar smote him like a blow, and he heard the far call to prayer from
+the minarets of Sa-el-Hagar, once Saïs, the mysterious--Saïs of the
+million lanterns, Saïs of that splendid festival where the Great Triad's
+worship swayed dynasty after dynasty, and where, through the hot
+centuries, Isis, veiled, impassive, looked out upon the hundredth king
+of kings, Meris, the Builder of Gardens, dragged dead at the chariot of
+Upper and Lower Egypt.
+
+Slowly the visions faded; into his remote eyes crept the consciousness
+of the twentieth century again; he heard the river whistles blowing, and
+the far dissonance of the streets--that iron undertone vibrating through
+the metropolis of the West from river to river and from the Palisades to
+the sea.
+
+His gaze wandered about the room, from telephone desk to bookcase, from
+the table to the huge steel safe, door ajar, swung outward like the
+polished breech of a twelve-inch gun.
+
+Then his vacant eyes met the eyes of the Tracer of Lost Persons, almost
+helplessly. And for the first time the full significance of this quest
+he had undertaken came over him like despair--this strange, hopeless,
+fantastic quest, blindly, savagely pursued from the sand wastes of Saïs
+to the wastes of this vast arid city of iron and masonry, ringing to the
+sky with the menacing clamor of its five monstrous boroughs.
+
+Curiously weary of a sudden, he sat down, resting his head on one hand.
+The Tracer watched him, bent partly over his desk. From moment to moment
+he tore minute pieces from the blotter, or drew imaginary circles and
+arabesques on his pad with an inkless pen.
+
+"Perhaps I could help you, after all--if you'd let me try," he said
+quietly.
+
+"Dou you mean--_me_?" asked Burke, without raising his head.
+
+"If you like--yes, you--or any man in trouble--in perplexity--in the
+uncertain deductions which arise from an attempt at self-analysis."
+
+"It is true; I am trying to analyze myself. I believe that I don't know
+how. All has been mere impulse--so far. No, I don't know how to analyze
+it all."
+
+"I do," said the Tracer.
+
+Burke raised his level, unbelieving eyes.
+
+"You are in love," said the Tracer.
+
+After a long time Burke looked up again. "Do you think so?"
+
+"Yes. Can I help you?" asked the Tracer pleasantly.
+
+The young man sat silent, frowning into space; then:
+
+"I tell you plainly enough that I have come here to argue with two men
+at the end of a pistol; and--you tell me I'm in love. By what logic--"
+
+"It is written in your face, Mr. Burke--in your eyes, in every feature,
+every muscle's contraction, every modulation of your voice. My tables,
+containing six hundred classified superficial phenomena peculiar to all
+human emotions, have been compiled and scientifically arranged according
+to Bertillon's system. It is an absolutely accurate key to every phase
+of human emotion, from hate, through all its amazingly paradoxical
+phenomena, to love, with all its genera under the suborder--all its
+species, subspecies, and varieties."
+
+He leaned back, surveying the young man with kindly amusement.
+
+"You talk of pistol range, but you are thinking of something more fatal
+than bullets, Mr. Burke. You are thinking of love--of the first, great,
+absorbing, unreasoning passion that has ever shaken you, blinded you,
+seized you and dragged you out of the ordered path of life, to push you
+violently into the strange and unexplored! That is what stares out on
+the world through those haunted eyes of yours, when the smile dies out
+and you are off your guard; that is what is hardening those flat, clean
+bands of muscle in jaw and cheek; that is what those hints of shadow
+mean beneath the eye, that new and delicate pinch to the nostril, that
+refining, almost to sharpness, of the nose, that sensitive edging to the
+lips, and the lean delicacy of the chin."
+
+He bent slightly forward in his chair.
+
+"There is all that there, Mr. Burke, and something else--the glimmering
+dawn of desperation."
+
+"Yes," said the other, "that is there. I am desperate."
+
+"_Ex_actly. Also you wear two revolvers in a light, leather harness
+strapped up under your armpits," said the Tracer, laughing. "Take them
+off, Mr. Burke. There is nothing to be gained in shooting up Mr. Smiles
+or converting Mr. Gandon into nitrates."
+
+"If it is a matter where one man can help another," the Tracer added
+simply, "it would give me pleasure to place my resources at your
+command--without recompense--"
+
+"Mr. Keen!" said Burke, astonished.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You are very amiable; I had not wished--had not expected anything
+except professional interest from you."
+
+"Why not? I like you, Mr. Burke."
+
+The utter disarming candor of this quiet, elderly gentleman silenced the
+younger man with a suddenness born of emotions long crushed, long
+relentlessly mastered, and which now, in revolt, shook him fiercely in
+every fiber. All at once he felt very young, very helpless in the
+world--that same world through which, until within a few weeks, he had
+roved so confidently, so arrogantly, challenging man and the gods
+themselves in the pride of his strength and youth.
+
+But now, halting, bewildered, lost amid the strange maze of byways
+whither impulse had lured and abandoned him, he looked out into a world
+of wilderness and unfamiliar stars and shadow shapes undreamed of, and
+he knew not which way to turn--not even how to return along the ways his
+impetuous feet had trodden in this strange and hopeless quest of his.
+
+"How can you help me?" he said bluntly, while the quivering undertone
+rang in spite of him. "Yes, I am in love; but how can any living man
+help me?"
+
+"Are you in love with the dead?" asked the Tracer gravely. "For that
+only is hopeless. Are you in love with one who is not living?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You love one whom you know to be dead?"
+
+"Yes; dead."
+
+"How do you know that she is dead?"
+
+"That is not the question. I knew that when I fell in love with her. It
+is not that which appals me; I ask nothing more than to live my life out
+loving the dead. I--I ask very little."
+
+He passed his unsteady hand across his dry lips, across his eyes and
+forehead, then laid his clinched fist on the table.
+
+"Some men remain constant to a memory; some to a picture--sane,
+wholesome, normal men. Some men, with a fixed ideal, never encounter its
+facsimile, and so never love. There is nothing strange, after all, in
+this; nothing abnormal, nothing unwholesome. Grünwald loved the marble
+head and shoulders of the lovely Amazon in the Munich Museum; he died
+unmarried, leaving the charities and good deeds of a blameless life to
+justify him. Sir Henry Guest, the great surgeon who worked among the
+poor without recompense, loved Gainsborough's 'Lady Wilton.' The
+portrait hangs above his tomb in St. Clement's Hundreds. D'Epernay loved
+Mlle. Jeanne Vacaresco, who died before he was born. And I--I love in
+my own fashion."
+
+His low voice rang with the repressed undertone of excitement; he opened
+and closed his clinched hand as though controlling the lever of his
+emotions.
+
+"What can you do for a man who loves the shadow of Life?" he asked.
+
+"If you love the shadow because the substance has passed away--if you
+love the soul because the dust has returned to the earth as it was--"
+
+"It has _not_!" said the younger man.
+
+The Tracer said very gravely: "It is written that whenever 'the Silver
+Cord' is loosed, 'then shall the dust return unto the earth as it was,
+and the spirit shall return unto Him who gave it.'"
+
+"The spirit--yes; _that_ has taken its splendid flight--"
+
+His voice choked up, died out; he strove to speak again, but could not.
+The Tracer let him alone, and bent again over his desk, drawing
+imaginary circles on the stained blotter, while moment after moment
+passed under the tension of that fiercest of all struggles, when a man
+sits throttling his own soul into silence.
+
+And, after a long time, Burke lifted a haggard face from the cradle of
+his crossed arms and shook his shoulders, drawing a deep, steady breath.
+
+"Listen to _me_!" he said in an altered voice.
+
+And the Tracer of Lost Persons nodded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+"When I left the Point I was assigned to the colored cavalry. They are
+good men; we went up Kettle Hill together. Then came the Philippine
+troubles, then that Chinese affair. Then I did staff duty, and could not
+stand the inactivity and resigned. They had no use for me in Manchuria;
+I tired of waiting, and went to Venezuela. The prospects for service
+there were absurd; I heard of the Moorish troubles and went to Morocco.
+Others of my sort swarmed there; matters dragged and dragged, and the
+Kaiser never meant business, anyway.
+
+"Being independent, and my means permitting me, I got some shooting in
+the back country. This all degenerated into the merest nomadic
+wandering--nothing but sand, camels, ruins, tents, white walls, and blue
+skies. And at last I came to the town of Sa-el-Hagar."
+
+His voice died out; his restless, haunted eyes became fixed.
+
+"Sa-el-Hagar, once ancient Saïs," repeated the Tracer quietly; and the
+young man looked at him.
+
+"You know _that_?"
+
+"Yes," said the Tracer.
+
+For a while Burke remained silent, preoccupied, then, resting his chin
+on his hand and speaking in a curiously monotonous voice, as though
+repeating to himself by rote, he went on:
+
+"The town is on the heights--have you a pencil? Thank you. Here is the
+town of Sa-el-Hagar, here are the ruins, here is the wall, and somewhere
+hereabouts should be the buried temple of Neith, which nobody has
+found." He shifted his pencil. "Here is the lake of Saïs; here, standing
+all alone on the plain, are those great monolithic pillars stretching
+away into perspective--four hundred of them in all--a hundred and nine
+still upright. There were one hundred and ten when I arrived at El Teb
+Wells."
+
+He looked across at the Tracer, repeating: "One hundred and ten--when I
+arrived. One fell the first night--a distant pillar far away on the
+horizon. Four thousand years had it stood there. And it fell--the first
+night of my arrival. I heard it; the nights are cold at El Teb Wells,
+and I was lying awake, all a-shiver, counting the stars to make me
+sleep. And very, very far away in the desert I heard and felt the shock
+of its fall--the fall of forty centuries under the Egyptian stars."
+
+His eyes grew dreamy; a slight glow had stained his face.
+
+"Did you ever halt suddenly in the Northern forests, listening, as
+though a distant voice had hailed you? Then you understand why that far,
+dull sound from the dark horizon brought me to my feet, bewildered,
+listening, as though my own name had been spoken.
+
+"I heard the wind in the tents and the stir of camels; I heard the reeds
+whispering on Saïs Lake and the yap-yap of a shivering jackal; and
+always, always, the hushed echo in my ears of my own name called across
+the star-lit waste.
+
+"At dawn I had forgotten. An Arab told me that a pillar had fallen; it
+was all the same to me, to him, to the others, too. The sun came out
+hot. I like heat. My men sprawled in the tents; some watered, some went
+up to the town to gossip in the bazaar. I mounted and cast bridle on
+neck--you see how much I cared where I went! In two hours we had
+completed a circle--like a ruddy hawk above El Teb. And my horse halted
+beside the fallen pillar."
+
+As he spoke his language had become very simple, very direct, almost
+without accent, and he spoke slowly, picking his way with that lack of
+inflection, of emotion characteristic of a child reading a new reader.
+
+"The column had fallen from its base, eastward, and with its base it had
+upheaved another buried base, laying bare a sort of cellar and a flight
+of stone steps descending into darkness.
+
+"Into this excavation the sand was still running in tiny rivulets.
+Listening, I could hear it pattering far, far down into the shadows.
+
+"Sitting there in the saddle, the thing explained itself as I looked.
+The fallen pillar had been built upon older ruins; all Egypt is that
+way, ruin founded on the ruin of ruins--like human hopes.
+
+"The stone steps, descending into the shadow of remote ages, invited me.
+I dismounted, walked to the edge of the excavation, and, kneeling,
+peered downward. And I saw a wall and the lotus-carved rim of a vast
+stone-framed pool; and as I looked I heard the tinkle of water. For the
+pillar, falling, had unbottled the ancient spring, and now the
+stone-framed lagoon was slowly filling after its drought of centuries.
+
+"There was light enough to see by, but, not knowing how far I might
+penetrate, I returned to my horse, pocketed matches and candles from
+the saddlebags, and, returning, started straight down the steps of
+stone.
+
+"Fountain, wall, lagoon, steps, terraces half buried--all showed what
+the place had been: a water garden of ancient Egypt--probably
+royal--because, although I am not able to decipher hieroglyphics, I have
+heard somewhere that these picture inscriptions, when inclosed in a
+cartouch like this"--he drew rapidly--
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+"or this
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+indicate that the subject of the inscription was once a king.
+
+"And on every wall, every column, I saw the insignia of ancient royalty,
+and I saw strange hawk-headed figures bearing symbols engraved on
+stone--beasts, birds, fishes, unknown signs and symbols; and everywhere
+the lotus carved in stone--the bud, the blossom half-inclosed, the
+perfect flower."
+
+His dreamy eyes met the gaze of the Tracer, unseeing; he rested his
+sunburned face between both palms, speaking in the same vague monotone:
+
+"Everywhere dust, ashes, decay, the death of life, the utter
+annihilation of the living--save only the sparkle of reborn waters
+slowly covering the baked bed of the stone-edged pool--strange, luminous
+water, lacking the vital sky tint, enameled with a film of dust, yet,
+for all that, quickening with imprisoned brilliancy like an opal.
+
+"The slow filling of the pool fascinated me; I stood I know not how long
+watching the thin film of water spreading away into the dimness beyond.
+At last I turned and passed curiously along the wall where, at its base,
+mounds of dust marked what may have been trees. Into these I probed with
+my riding crop, but discovered nothing except the depths of the dust.
+
+"When I had penetrated the ghost of this ancient garden for a thousand
+yards the light from the opening was no longer of any service. I lighted
+a candle; and its yellow rays fell upon a square portal into which led
+another flight of steps. And I went down.
+
+"There were eighteen steps descending into a square stone room. Strange
+gleams and glimmers from wall and ceiling flashed dimly in my eyes under
+the wavering flame of the candle. Then the flame grew still--still as
+death--and Death lay at my feet--there on the stone floor--a man, square
+shouldered, hairless, the cobwebs of his tunic mantling him, lying face
+downward, arms outflung.
+
+"After a moment I stooped and touched him, and the entire prostrate
+figure dissolved into dust where it lay, leaving at my feet a shadow
+shape in thin silhouette against the pavement--merely a gray layer of
+finest dust shaped like a man, a tracery of impalpable powder on the
+stones.
+
+"Upward and around me I passed the burning candle; vast figures in blue
+and red and gold grew out of the darkness; the painted walls sparkled;
+the shadows that had slept through all those centuries trembled and
+shrank away into distant corners.
+
+"And then--and then I saw the gold edges of her sandals sparkle in the
+darkness, and the clasped girdle of virgin gold around her slender waist
+glimmered like purest flame!"
+
+Burke, leaning far across the table, interlocked hands tightening,
+stared and stared into space. A smile edged his mouth; his voice grew
+wonderfully gentle:
+
+"Why, she was scarcely eighteen--this child--there so motionless, so
+lifelike, with the sandals edging her little upturned feet, and the
+small hands of her folded between the breasts. It was as though she
+had just stretched herself out there--scarcely sound asleep as yet, and
+her thick, silky hair--cut as they cut children's hair in these days,
+you know--cradled her head and cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: "'As though . . . scarcely sound asleep as yet.'"]
+
+"So marvelous the mimicry of life, so absolute the deception of
+breathing sleep, that I scarce dared move, fearing to awaken her.
+
+"When I did move I forgot the dusty shape of the dead at my feet, and
+left, full across his neck, the imprint of a spurred riding boot. It
+gave me my first shudder; I turned, feeling beneath my foot the soft,
+yielding powder, and stood aghast. Then--it is absurd!--but I felt as a
+man feels who has trodden inadvertently upon another's foot--and in an
+impulse of reparation I stooped hastily and attempted to smooth out the
+mortal dust which bore the imprint of my heel. But the fine powder
+flaked my glove, and, looking about for something to compose the ashes
+with, I picked up a papyrus scroll. Perhaps he himself had written on
+it; nobody can ever know, and I used it as a sort of hoe to scrape him
+together and smooth him out on the stones."
+
+The young man drew a yellowish roll of paper-like substance from his
+pocket and laid it on the table.
+
+"This is the same papyrus," he said. "I had forgotten that I carried it
+away with me until I found it in my shooting coat while packing to sail
+for New York."
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons reached over and picked up the scroll. It was
+flexible still, but brittle; he opened it with great care, considered
+the strange figures upon it for a while, then turned almost sharply on
+his visitor.
+
+"Go on," he said.
+
+And Burke went on:
+
+"The candle was burning low; I lighted two more, placing them at her
+head and feet on the edges of the stone couch. Then, lighting a third
+candle, I stood beside the couch and looked down at the dead girl under
+her veil-like robe, set with golden stars."
+
+He passed his hand wearily over his hair and forehead.
+
+"I do not know what the accepted meaning of beauty may be if it was not
+there under my eyes. Flawless as palest amber ivory and rose, the
+smooth-flowing contours melted into exquisite symmetry; lashes like
+darkest velvet rested on the pure curve of the cheeks; the closed lids,
+the mouth still faintly stained with color, the delicate nose, the full,
+childish lips, sensitive, sweet, resting softly upon each other--if
+these were not all parts of but one lovely miracle, then there is no
+beauty save in a dream of Paradise. . . .
+
+"A gold band of linked scarabs bound her short, thick hair straight
+across the forehead; thin scales of gold fell from a necklace, clothing
+her breasts in brilliant discolored metal, through which ivory-tinted
+skin showed. A belt of pure, soft gold clasped her body at the waist;
+gold-edged sandals clung to her little feet.
+
+"At first, when the stunned surprise had subsided, I thought that I was
+looking upon some miracle of ancient embalming, hitherto unknown. Yet,
+in the smooth skin there was no slit to prove it, no opening in any vein
+or artery, no mutilation of this sculptured masterpiece of the Most
+High, no cerements, no bandages, no gilded carven case with painted face
+to stare open eyed through the wailing cycles.
+
+"This was the image of sleep--of life unconscious--not of death. Yet is
+was death--death that had come upon her centuries and centuries ago; for
+the gold had turned iridescent and magnificently discolored; the sandal
+straps fell into dust as I bent above them, leaving the sandals clinging
+to her feet only by the wired silver core of the thongs. And, as I
+touched it fearfully, the veil-like garment covering her, vanished into
+thin air, its metal stars twinkling in a shower around her on the stone
+floor."
+
+The Tracer, motionless, intent, scarcely breathed; the younger man moved
+restlessly in his chair, the dazed light in his eyes clearing to sullen
+consciousness.
+
+"What more is there to tell?" he said. "And to what purpose? All this is
+time wasted. I have my work cut out for me. What more is there to tell?"
+
+"What you have left untold," said the Tracer, with the slightest ring of
+authority in his quiet voice.
+
+And, as though he had added "Obey!" the younger man sank back in his
+chair, his hands contracting nervously.
+
+"I went back to El Teb," he said; "I walked like a dreaming man. My
+sleep was haunted by her beauty; night after night, when at last I fell
+asleep, instantly I saw her face, and her dark eyes opening into mine in
+childish bewilderment; day after day I rode out to the fallen pillar and
+descended to that dark chamber where she lay alone. Then there came a
+time when I could not endure the thought of her lying there alone. I had
+never dared to touch her. Horror of what might happen had held me aloof
+lest she crumble at my touch to that awful powder which I had trodden
+on.
+
+"I did not know what to do; my Arabs had begun to whisper among
+themselves, suspicious of my absences, impatient to break camp, perhaps,
+and roam on once more. Perhaps they believed I had discovered treasure
+somewhere; I am not sure. At any rate, dread of their following me,
+determination to take my dead away with me, drove me into action; and
+that day when I reached her silent chamber I lighted my candle, and,
+leaning above her for one last look, I touched her shoulder with my
+finger tip.
+
+"It was a strange sensation. Prepared for a dreadful dissolution,
+utterly unprepared for cool, yielding flesh, I almost dropped where I
+stood. For her body was neither cold nor warm, neither dust-dry nor
+moist; neither the skin of the living nor the dead. It was firm, almost
+stiff, yet not absolutely without a certain hint of flexibility.
+
+"The appalling wonder of it consumed me; fear, incredulity, terror,
+apathy succeeded each other; then slowly a fierce shrinking happiness
+swept me in every fiber.
+
+"This marvelous death, this triumph of beauty over death, was mine.
+Never again should she lie here alone through the solitudes of night and
+day; never again should the dignity of Death lack the tribute demanded
+of Life. Here was the appointed watcher--I, who had found her alone in
+the wastes of the world--all alone on the outermost edges of the
+world--a child, dead and unguarded. And standing there beside her I knew
+that I should never love again."
+
+He straightened up, stretching out his arm: "I did not intend to carry
+her away to what is known as Christian burial. How could I consign her
+to darkness again, with all its dreadful mockery of marble, all its
+awful emblems?
+
+"This lovely stranger was to be my guest forever. The living should be
+near her while she slept so sweetly her slumber through the centuries;
+she should have warmth, and soft hangings and sunlight and flowers; and
+her unconscious ears should be filled with the pleasant stir of living
+things. . . . I have a house in the country, a very old house among
+meadows and young woodlands. And I--I had dreamed of giving this child a
+home--"
+
+His voice broke; he buried his head in his hands a moment; but when he
+lifted it again his features were hard as steel.
+
+"There was already talk in the bazaar about me. I was probably followed,
+but I did not know it. Then one of my men disappeared. For a week I
+hesitated to trust my Arabs; but there was no other way. I told them
+there was a mummy which I desired to carry to some port and smuggle out
+of the country without consulting the Government. I knew perfectly well
+that the Government would never forego its claim to such a relic of
+Egyptian antiquity. I offered my men too much, perhaps. I don't know.
+They hesitated for a week, trying by every artifice to see the treasure,
+but I never let them out of my sight.
+
+"Then one day two white men came into camp; and with them came a
+government escort to arrest me for looting an Egyptian tomb. The white
+men were Joram Smiles and that Eurasian, Emanuel Gandon, who was partly
+white, I suppose. I didn't comprehend what they were up to at first.
+They escorted me forty miles to confront the official at Shen-Bak. When,
+after a stormy week, I was permitted to return to Saïs, my Arabs and the
+white men were gone. And the stone chamber under the water garden wall
+was empty as the hand I hold out to you!"
+
+He opened his palm and rose, his narrowing eyes clear and dangerous.
+
+"At the bazaar I learned enough to know what had been done. I traced the
+white men to the coast. They sailed on the _Scythian Queen_, taking
+with them all that I care for on earth or in heaven! And you ask me why
+I measure their distance from me by a bullet's flight!"
+
+The Tracer also rose, pale and grave.
+
+"Wait!" he said. "There are other things to be done before you prepare
+to face a jury for double murder."
+
+"It is for them to choose," said Burke. "They shall have the choice of
+returning to me my dead, or of going to hell full of lead."
+
+"_Ex_actly, my dear sir. That part is not difficult," said the Tracer
+quietly. "There will be no occasion for violence, I assure you. Kindly
+leave such details to me. I know what is to be done. You are outwardly
+very calm, Mr. Burke--even dangerously placid; but though you maintain
+an admirable command over yourself superficially, you are laboring under
+terrible excitement. Therefore it is my duty to say to you at once that
+there is no cause for your excitement, no cause for your apprehension as
+to results. I feel exceedingly confident that you will, in due time,
+regain possession of all that you care for most--quietly, quietly, my
+dear sir! You are not yet ready to meet these men, nor am I ready to go
+with you. I beg you to continue your habit of self-command for a
+little while. There is no haste--that is to say, there is every reason
+to make haste slowly. And the quickest method is to seat yourself. Thank
+you. And I shall sit here beside you and spread out this papyrus scroll
+for your inspection."
+
+[Illustration: Hieroglyphics]
+
+Burke stared at the Tracer, then at the scroll.
+
+"What has that inscription to do with the matter in hand?" he demanded
+impatiently.
+
+"I leave you to judge," said the Tracer. A dull tint of excitement
+flushed his lean cheeks; he twisted his gray mustache and bent over the
+unrolled scroll which was now held flat by weights at the four corners.
+
+"Can you understand any of these symbols, Mr. Burke?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Curious," mused the Tracer. "Do you know it was fortunate that you put
+this bit of papyrus in the pocket of your shooting coat--so fortunate
+that, in a way, it approaches the miraculous?"
+
+"What do you mean? Is there anything in that scroll bearing on this
+matter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you can read it? Are you versed in such learning, Mr. Keen?"
+
+"I am an Egyptologist--among other details," said the Tracer calmly.
+
+The young man gazed at him, astonished. The Tracer of Lost Persons
+picked up a pencil, laid a sheet of paper on the table beside the
+papyrus, and slowly began to copy the first symbol:
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+"The ancient Egyptian word for the personal pronoun 'I' was _anuk_,"
+said the Tracer placidly. "The phonetic for _a_ was the hieroglyph
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+a reed; for _n_ the water symbol
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+for _u_ the symbols
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+for _k_
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+Therefore this hieroglyphic inscription begins with the personal pronoun
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+or _I_. That is very easy, of course.
+
+"Now, the most ancient of Egyptian inscriptions read vertically in
+columns; there are only two columns in this papyrus, so we'll try it
+vertically and pass downward to the next symbol, which is inclosed in a
+sort of frame or cartouch. That immediately signifies that royalty is
+mentioned; therefore, we have already translated as much as 'I, the king
+(or queen).' Do you see?"
+
+"Yes," said Burke, staring.
+
+"Very well. Now this symbol, number two,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+spells out the word '_Meris_,' in this way: M (pronounced _me_) is
+phonetically symbolized by the characters
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+_r_ by
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+(a mouth) and the comma
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+and the hieroglyph
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+_i_ by two reeds
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+and two oblique strokes,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+and _s_ by
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+This gives us Meris, the name of that deposed and fugitive king of
+Egypt who, after a last raid on the summer palace of Mer-Shen, usurping
+ruler of Egypt, was followed and tracked to Saïs, where, with an arrow
+through his back, he crawled to El Teb and finally died there of his
+wound. All this Egyptologists are perfectly familiar with in the
+translations of the boastful tablets and inscriptions erected near Saïs
+by Mer-Shen, the three hundred and twelfth sovereign after Queen
+Nitocris."
+
+He looked up at Burke, smiling. "Therefore," he said, "this papyrus
+scroll was written by Meris, ex-king, a speculative thousands of years
+before Christ. And it begins: 'I, Meris the King.'"
+
+"How does all this bear upon what concerns me?" demanded Burke.
+
+"Wait!"
+
+Something in the quiet significance of the Tracer's brief command sent a
+curious thrill through the younger man. He leaned stiffly forward,
+studying the scroll, every faculty concentrated on the symbol which the
+Tracer had now touched with the carefully sharpened point of his pencil:
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+"That," said Mr. Keen, "is the ancient Egyptian word for 'little,'
+'_Ket_.' The next, below, written in two lines, is 'Samaris,' a proper
+name--the name of a woman. Under that, again, is the symbol for the
+number 18; the decimal sign,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+and eight vertical strokes,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+Under that, again, is a hieroglyph of another sort, an ideograph
+representing a girl with a harp; and, beneath that, the symbol which
+always represented a dancing girl
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+and also the royal symbol inclosed in a cartouch,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+which means literally 'the Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.' Under that
+is the significant symbol
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+representing an arm and a hand holding a stick. This always means
+_force_--to take forcibly or to use violence. Therefore, so far, we have
+the following literal translation: 'I, Meris the King, little Samaris,
+eighteen, a harpist, dancing girl, the Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt,
+to take by violence--'"
+
+"What does that make?" broke in Burke impatiently.
+
+"_Wait!_ Wait until we have translated everything literally. And, Mr.
+Burke, it might make it easier for us both if you would remember that I
+have had the pleasure of deciphering many hundreds of papyri before you
+had ever heard that there were such things."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the young man in a low voice.
+
+"I beg yours for my impatience," said the Tracer pleasantly. "This
+deciphering always did affect my nerves and shorten my temper. And, no
+doubt, it is quite as hard on you. Shall we go on, Mr. Burke?"
+
+"If you please, Mr. Keen."
+
+So the Tracer laid his pencil point on the next symbol
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+"That is the symbol for night," he said; "and that
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+is the water symbol again, as you know; and that
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+is the ideograph, meaning a ship. The five reversed crescents
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+record the number of days voyage; the sign
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+means a house, and is also the letter H in the Egyptian alphabet.
+
+"Under it, again, we have a repetition of the first symbol meaning _I_,
+and a repetition of the second symbol, meaning 'Meris, the King.' Then,
+below that cartouch, comes a new symbol,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+which is the feminine personal pronoun, _sentus_, meaning '_she_'; and
+the first column is completed with the symbol for the ancient Egyptian
+verb, _nehes_, 'to awake,'
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+"And now we take the second column, which begins with the jackal
+ideograph expressing slyness or cleverness. Under it is the hieroglyph
+meaning 'to run away,' 'to escape.' And under that, Mr. Burke, is one of
+the rarest of all Egyptian symbols; a symbol seldom seen on stone or
+papyrus,
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+except in rare references to the mysteries of Isis. The meaning of it,
+so long in dispute, has finally been practically determined through a
+new discovery in the cuneiform inscriptions. It is the symbol of two
+hands holding two _closed_ eyes; and it signifies power."
+
+"You mean that those ancients understood hypnotism?" asked Burke,
+astonished.
+
+"Evidently their priests did; evidently hypnotism was understood and
+employed in certain mysteries. And there is the symbol of it; and under
+it the hieroglyphs
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+meaning 'a day and a night,' with the symbol
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+as usual present to signify force or strength employed. Under that,
+again, is a human figure stretched upon a typical Egyptian couch. And
+now, Mr. Burke, _note carefully_ three modifying signs: first, that it
+is a _couch_ or _bed_ on which the figure is stretched, not the funeral
+couch, not the embalming slab; second, there is no mummy mask covering
+the face, and no mummy case covering the body; third, that under the
+recumbent figure is pictured an _open_ mouth, not a _closed_ one.
+
+"All these modify the ideograph, apparently representing death. But the
+sleep symbol is not present. Therefore it is a sound inference that all
+this simply confirms the symbol of hypnotism."
+
+Burke, intensely absorbed, stared steadily at the scroll.
+
+"Now," continued Mr. Keen, "we note the symbol of force again, always
+present; and, continuing horizontally, a cartouch quite empty except for
+the midday sun. That is simply translated; the midday sun illuminates
+nothing. Meris, deposed, is king only in name; and the sun no longer
+shines on him as 'Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.' Under that despairing
+symbol, 'King of Nothing,' we have
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+the phonetics which spell _sha_, the word for garden. And, just beyond
+this, horizontally, the modifying ideograph meaning 'a _water_ garden';
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+a design of lotus and tree alternating on a terrace. Under that is the
+symbol for the word '_aneb_,'
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+a 'wall.' Beyond that, horizontally, is the symbol for 'house.' It
+should be placed under the wall symbol, but the Egyptians were very apt
+to fill up spaces instead of continuing their vertical columns. Now,
+beneath, we find the imperative command
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+'arise!' And the Egyptian personal pronoun '_entuten_,'
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+which means 'you' or 'thou.'
+
+"Under that is the symbol
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+which means 'priest,' or, literally, 'priest man.' Then comes the
+imperative 'awake to life!'
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+After that, our first symbol again, meaning '_I_,' followed horizontally
+by the symbol
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+signifying 'to go.'
+
+"Then comes a very important drawing--you see?--the picture of a man
+with a jackal's head, not a dog's head. It is not accompanied by the
+phonetic in a cartouch, as it should be. Probably the writer was in
+desperate haste at the end. But, nevertheless, it is easy to translate
+that symbol of the man with a jackal's head. It is a picture of the
+Egyptian god, Anubis, who was supposed to linger at the side of the
+dying to conduct their souls. Anubis, the jackal-headed, is the courier,
+the personal escort of departing souls. And this is he.
+
+"And now the screed ends with the cry 'Pray for me!'
+
+[Illustration: Glyph]
+
+the last symbol on this strange scroll--this missive written by a
+deposed, wounded, and dying king to an unnamed priest. Here is the
+literal translation in columns:
+
+I                                  cunning
+Meris the King                     escape
+little                             hypnotize
+Samaris                            King of Nothing
+eighteen                           place forcibly
+a harpist                          garden
+a dancing girl--Ruler of           water garden
+  Upper and Lower                  wall
+  Egypt                            house
+took forcibly--night               Arise. Do
+by water                           Thou
+five days                          Priest Man
+ship                               Awake
+house                              To life
+I                                  I go
+Meris the King                     Anubis
+she                                Pray
+awake
+
+"And this is what that letter, thousands of years old, means in this
+language of ours, hundreds of years young: 'I, Meris the King, seized
+little Samaris, a harpist and a dancing girl, eighteen years of age,
+belonging to the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, and carried her away at
+night on shipboard--a voyage of five days--to my house. I, Meris the
+King, lest she lie awake watching cunningly for a chance to escape,
+hypnotized her (or had her hypnotized) so that she lay like one dead or
+asleep, but breathing, and I, King no longer of Upper and Lower Egypt,
+took her and placed her in my house under the wall of the water garden.
+Arise! therefore, O thou priest; (go) and awaken her to life. I am dying
+(I go with Anubis!). Pray for me!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+For a full minute the two men sat there without moving or speaking. Then
+the Tracer laid aside his pencil.
+
+"To sum up," he said, opening the palm of his left hand and placing the
+forefinger of his right across it, "the excavation made by the falling
+pillar raised in triumph above the water garden of the deposed king,
+Meris, by his rival, was the subterranean house of Meris. The prostrate
+figure which crumbled to powder at your touch may have been the very
+priest to whom this letter or papyrus was written. Perhaps the bearer of
+the scroll was a traitor and stabbed the priest as he was reading the
+missive. Who can tell how that priest died? He either died or betrayed
+his trust, for he never aroused the little Samaris from her suspended
+animation. And the water garden fell into ruins and she slept; and the
+Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt raised his columns, lotus crowned, above
+the ruins; and she slept on. Then--_you_ came."
+
+Burke stared like one stupefied.
+
+"I do not know," said the Tracer gravely, "what balm there may be in a
+suspension of sensation, perhaps of vitality, to protect the human body
+from corruption after death. I do not know how soon suspended animation
+or the state of hypnotic coma, undisturbed, changes into death--whether
+it comes gradually, imperceptibly freeing the soul; whether the soul
+hides there, asleep, until suddenly the flame of vitality is
+extinguished. I do not know how long she lay there with life in her."
+
+He leaned back and touched an electric bell, then, turning to Burke:
+
+"Speaking of pistol range," he said, "unstrap those weapons and pass
+them over, if you please."
+
+And the young man obeyed as in a trance.
+
+"Thank you. There are four men coming into this room. You will keep your
+seat, if you please, Mr. Burke."
+
+After a moment the door opened noiselessly. Two men handcuffed together
+entered the room; two men, hands in their pockets, sauntered carelessly
+behind the prisoners and leaned back against the closed door.
+
+"That short, red-haired, lame man with the cast in his eye--do you
+recognize him?" asked the Tracer quietly.
+
+Burke, grasping the arms of his chair, had started to rise, fury fairly
+blazing from his eyes; but, at the sound of the Tracer's calm, even
+voice, he sank back into his chair.
+
+"That is Joram Smiles? You recognize him?" continued Mr. Keen.
+
+Burke nodded.
+
+"_Ex_actly--alias Limpy, alias Red Jo, alias Big Stick Joram, alias
+Pinky; swindler, international confidence man, fence, burglar, gambler;
+convicted in 1887, and sent to Sing Sing for forgery; convicted in 1898,
+and sent to Auburn for swindling; arrested by my men on board the S. S.
+_Scythian Queen_, at the cabled request of John T. Burke, Esquire, and
+held to explain the nature of his luggage, which consisted of the
+contents of an Egyptian vault or underground ruin, declared at the
+customhouse as a mummy, and passed as such."
+
+The quiet, monotonous voice of the Tracer halted, then, as he glanced at
+the second prisoner, grew harder:
+
+"Emanuel Gandon, general international criminal, with over half a
+hundred aliases, arrested in company with Smiles and held until Mr.
+Burke's arrival."
+
+Turning to Burke, the Tracer continued: "Fortunately, the _Scythian
+Queen_ broke down off Brindisi. It gave us time to act on your cable;
+we found these men aboard when she was signaled off the Hook. I went out
+with the pilot myself, Mr. Burke."
+
+Smiles shot a wicked look at Burke; Gandon scowled at the floor.
+
+"Now," said the Tracer pleasantly, meeting the venomous glare of Smiles,
+"I'll get you that warrant you have been demanding to have exhibited to
+you. Here it is--charging you and your amiable friend Gandon with
+breaking into and robbing the Metropolitan Museum of ancient Egyptian
+gold ornaments, in March, 1903, and taking them to France, where they
+were sold to collectors. It seems that you found the business good
+enough to go prowling about Egypt on a hunt for something to sell here.
+A great mistake, my friends--a very great mistake, because, after the
+Museum has finished with you, the Egyptian Government desires to
+extradite you. And I rather suspect you'll have to go."
+
+He nodded to the two quiet men leaning against the door.
+
+"Come, Joram," said one of them pleasantly.
+
+But Smiles turned furiously on the Tracer. "You lie, you old gray rat!"
+he cried. "That ain't no mummy; that's a plain dead girl! And there
+ain't no extrydition for body snatchin', so I guess them niggers at
+Cairo won't get us, after all!"
+
+"Perhaps," said the Tracer, looking at Burke, who had risen, pale and
+astounded. "Sit down, Mr. Burke! There is no need to question these men;
+no need to demand what they robbed you of. For," he added slowly, "what
+they took from the garden grotto of Saïs, and from you, I have under my
+own protection."
+
+The Tracer rose, locked the door through which the prisoners and their
+escorts had departed; then, turning gravely on Burke, he continued:
+
+"That panel, there, is a door. There is a room beyond--a room facing to
+the south, bright with sunshine, flowers, soft rugs, and draperies of
+the East. _She_ is there--like a child asleep!"
+
+Burke reeled, steadying himself against the wall; the Tracer stared at
+space, speaking very slowly:
+
+"Such death I have never before heard of. From the moment she came under
+my protection I have dared to doubt--many things. And an hour ago you
+brought me a papyrus scroll confirming my doubts. I doubt still--Heaven
+knows what! Who can say how long the flame of life may flicker within
+suspended animation? A week? A month? A year? Longer than that? Yes;
+the Hindoos have proved it. How long? The span of a normal life? Or
+longer? Can the life flame burn indefinitely when the functions are
+absolutely suspended--generation after generation, century after
+century?"
+
+Burke, ghastly white, straightened up, quivering in every limb; the
+Tracer, as pale as he, laid his hand on the secret panel.
+
+"If--if you dare say it--the phrase is this: '_O Ket Samaris,
+Nehes!_'--'O Little Samaris, awake!'"
+
+"I--dare. In Heaven's name, open that door!"
+
+Then, averting his head, the Tracer of Lost Persons swung open the
+panel.
+
+A flood of sunshine flashed on Burke's face; he entered; and the paneled
+door closed behind him without a sound.
+
+Minute after minute passed; the Tracer stood as though turned to stone,
+gray head bent.
+
+Then he heard Burke's voice ring out unsteadily:
+
+"O Ket Samaris--Samaris! O Ket Samaris--_Nehes!_"
+
+And again: "Samaris! Samaris! O beloved, awake!"
+
+And once more: "_Nehes!_ O Samaris!"
+
+Silence, broken by a strange, sweet, drowsy plaint--like a child
+awakened at midnight by a dazzling light.
+
+"Samaris!"
+
+Then, through the stillness, a little laugh, and a softly tremulous
+voice:
+
+"_Ari un aha, O Entuk sen!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+"What we want to do," said Gatewood over the telephone, "is to give you
+a corking little dinner at the Santa Regina. There'll be Mr. and Mrs.
+Tommy Kerns, Captain and Mrs. Harren, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Burke, Mrs.
+Gatewood, and myself. We want you to set the date for it, Mr. Keen, and
+we also wish you to suggest one more deliriously happy couple whom you
+have dragged out of misery and flung head-first into terrestrial
+paradise."
+
+"Do you young people really care to do this for me?" asked the Tracer,
+laughing.
+
+"Of course we do. We're crazy about it. We want one more couple, and you
+to set the date."
+
+There was the slightest pause; then the Tracer's voice, with the same
+undertone of amusement ringing through it:
+
+"How would your cousin, Victor Carden, do?"
+
+"He's all right, only he isn't married. We want two people whom you have
+joined together after hazard has put them asunder and done stunts with
+them."
+
+"Very well; Victor Carden and his very lovely wife will be just the
+people."
+
+"Is Victor married?" demanded Gatewood, astonished.
+
+"No," said the Tracer demurely, "but he will be in time for that
+dinner." And he set the date for the end of the week in an amused voice,
+and rang off.
+
+Then he glanced at the clock, touched an electric bell, and again
+unhooking the receiver of the telephone, called up the Sherwood Studios
+and asked for Mr. Carden.
+
+"Is _this_ Mr. Carden? Oh, good morning, Mr. Carden! This is Mr. Keen,
+Tracer of Lost Persons. Could you make it convenient to call--say in
+course of half an hour? Thank you. . . . What? . . . Well, speaking with
+that caution and reserve which we are obliged to employ in making any
+preliminary statements to our clients, I think I may safely say that you
+have every reason to feel moderately encouraged."
+
+"You mean," said Carden's voice, "that you have actually solved the
+proposition?"
+
+"It has been a difficult proposition, Mr. Carden; I will not deny that
+it has taxed our resources to the uttermost. Over a thousand people,
+first and last, have been employed on this case. It has been a slow and
+tedious affair, Mr. Carden--tedious for us all. We seldom have a case
+continue as long as this has; it is a year ago to-day since you placed
+the matter in our hands. . . . What? Well, without committing myself, I
+think that I may venture to express a carefully qualified opinion that
+the solution of the case is probably practically in the way of being
+almost accomplished! . . . Yes, I shall expect you in half an hour.
+Good-by!"
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons' eyes were twinkling as he hung up the
+receiver and turned in his revolving chair to meet the pretty young
+woman who had entered in response to his ring.
+
+"The Carden case, if you please, Miss Smith," he said, smiling to
+himself.
+
+The young woman also smiled; the Carden case had become a classic in the
+office. Nobody except Mr. Keen had believed that the case could ever be
+solved.
+
+"Safe-deposit box 108923!" said Miss Smith softly, pressing a speaking
+tube to her red lips. In a few moments there came a hissing thud from
+the pneumatic tube; Miss Smith unlocked it and extracted a smooth, steel
+cylinder.
+
+"The combination for that cylinder is A-4-44-11-X," observed the Tracer,
+consulting a cipher code, "which, translated," he added, "gives us the
+setting combination, One, D, R-R,-J-'24."
+
+Miss Smith turned the movable disks at the end of the cylinder until
+the required combination appeared. Then she unscrewed the cylinder head
+and dumped out the documents in the famous Carden case.
+
+"As Mr. Carden will be here in half an hour or so I think we had better
+run over the case briefly," nodded the Tracer, leaning back in his chair
+and composing himself to listen. "Begin with my preliminary memorandum,
+Miss Smith."
+
+"Case 108923," began the girl. Then she read the date, Carden's full
+name, Victor Carden, a terse biography of the same gentleman, and added:
+"Case accepted. Contingent fee, $5,000."
+
+"Quite so," said Mr. Keen; "now, run through the minutes of the first
+interview."
+
+And Miss Smith unrolled a typewritten scroll and read:
+
+"Victor Carden, Esquire, the well-known artist, called this evening at
+6.30. Tall, well-bred, good appearance, very handsome; very much
+embarrassed. Questioned by Mr. Keen he turned pink, and looked timidly
+at the stenographer (Miss Colt). Asked if he might not see Mr. Keen
+alone, Miss Colt retired. Mr. Keen set the recording phonograph in
+motion by dropping his elbow on his desk."
+
+A brief _résumé_ of the cylinder records followed:
+
+"Mr. Carden asked Mr. Keen if he (Mr. Keen) knew who he (Mr. Carden)
+was. Mr. Keen replied that everybody knew Mr. Carden, the celebrated
+painter and illustrator who had created the popular type of beauty known
+as the 'Carden Girl.' Mr. Carden blushed and fidgeted. (_Notes from. Mr.
+Keen's Observation Book, pp. 291-297._) Admitted that he was the creator
+of the 'Carden Girl.' Admitted he had drawn and painted that particular
+type of feminine beauty many times. Fidgeted some more. (_Keen's O.B.,
+pp. 298-299._) Volunteered the statement that this type of beauty, known
+as the 'Carden Girl,' was the cause of great unhappiness to himself.
+Questioned, turned pinker and fidgeted. (_K.O.B., page 300._) Denied
+that his present trouble was caused by the model who had posed for the
+'Carden Girl.' Explained that a number of assorted models had posed for
+that type of beauty. Further explained that none of them resembled the
+type; that the type was his own creation; that he used models merely for
+the anatomy, and that he always idealized form and features.
+
+"Questioned again, admitted that the features of the 'Carden Girl' were
+his ideal of the highest and loveliest type of feminine beauty. Did not
+deny that he had fallen in love with his own creation. Turned red and
+tried to smoke. (_K.O.B., page 303._) Admitted he had been fascinated
+himself with his own rendering of a type of beauty which he had never
+seen anywhere except as rendered by his own pencil on paper or on
+canvas. Fidgeted. (_K.O.B., page 304._) Admitted that he could easily
+fall in love with a woman who resembled the 'Carden Girl.' Didn't
+believe she ever really existed. Confessed he had hoped for years to
+encounter her, but had begun to despair. Admitted that he had ventured
+to think that Mr. Keen might trace such a girl for him. Doubted Mr.
+Keen's success. Fidgeted (_K.O.B., page 306_), and asked Mr. Keen to
+take the case. Promised to send to Mr. Keen a painting in oil which
+embodied his loftiest ideal of the type known as the 'Carden Girl.'
+(_Portrait received; lithographs made and distributed to our agents
+according to routine, from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the
+Pacific._)
+
+"Mr. Keen terminated the interview with characteristic tact, accepting
+the case on the contingent fee of $5,000."
+
+"Very well," said the Tracer, as Miss Smith rolled up the scroll and
+looked at him for further instructions. "Now, perhaps you had better run
+over the short summary of proceedings to date. I mean the digest which
+you will find attached to the completed records."
+
+Miss Smith found the paper, unrolled it, and read:
+
+"During the twelve months' investigation and search (_in re Carden_)
+seven hundred and nine young women were discovered who resembled very
+closely the type sought for. By process of elimination, owing to defects
+in figure, features, speech, breeding, etc., etc., this list was cut
+down to three. One of these occasionally chewed gum, but otherwise
+resembled the type. The second married before the investigation of her
+habits could be completed. The third is apparently a flawless replica of
+Mr. Carden's original in face, figure, breeding, education, moral and
+mental habits. (_See Document 23, A._)"
+
+"Read Document 23, A," nodded Mr. Keen.
+
+And Miss Smith read:
+
+ROSALIND HOLLIS, M.D.
+
+Age  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 24
+
+Height  .  .  .  .  .  .   5 feet 9 inches
+
+Weight  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  160 pounds
+
+                      Thick, bright, ruddy
+Hair .  .  .  .  .  . golden, and inclined
+                      to curl.
+
+Teeth   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect
+
+Eyes .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Dark violet-blue
+
+Mouth   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect
+
+Color   .  .  .  .   Fair. An ivory-tinted
+                     blonde.
+
+Figure  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect
+
+Health  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect
+
+Temper  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . Feminine
+
+                           Austere, with a
+Habits  .  .  .  .   resolutely suppressed
+                     capacity for romance.
+
+Business   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  None
+
+Profession .  .  .  .  .  .  .   Physician
+
+Mania   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   A Mission
+
+"NOTE.--Dr. Rosalind Hollis was presented to society in her eighteenth
+year. At the end of her second season she withdrew from society with the
+determination to devote her entire life to charity. Settlement work and
+the study of medicine have occupied her constantly. Recently admitted to
+practice, she spends her mornings in visiting the poor, whom she treats
+free of all charge; her afternoons and evenings are devoted to what she
+expects is to be her specialty: the study of the rare malady known as
+Lamour's Disease. (_See note on second page._)
+
+"It is understood that Dr. Hollis has abjured the society of all men
+other than her patients and such of her professional _confrères_ as she
+is obliged to consult or work with. Her theory is that of the beehive:
+drones for mates, workers for work. She adds, very decidedly, that she
+belongs to the latter division, and means to remain there permanently.
+
+"NOTE (_Mr. Keen's O.B., pp. 916-18_).--Her eccentricity is probably the
+result of a fine, wholesome, highly strung young girl taking life and
+herself too seriously. The remedy will be the _Right Man_."
+
+"_Ex_actly," nodded Mr. Keen, joining the tips of his thin fingers and
+partly closing his eyes. "Now, Miss Smith, the disease which Dr. Hollis
+intends to make her specialty--have you any notes on that?"
+
+"Here they are," said Miss Smith; and she read: "Lamour's Disease; the
+rarest of all known diseases; first discovered and described by Ero S.
+Lamour, M.D., M.S., F.B.A., M.F.H., in 1861. Only a single case has ever
+been observed. This case is fully described in Dr. Lamour's superb and
+monumental work in sixteen volumes. Briefly, the disease appears without
+any known cause, and is ultimately supposed to result fatally. The first
+symptom is the appearance of a faintly bluish circle under the eyes, as
+though the patient was accustomed to using the eyes too steadily at
+times. Sometimes a slight degree of fever accompanies this
+manifestation; pulse and temperature vary. The patient is apparently in
+excellent health, but liable to loss of appetite, restlessness, and a
+sudden flushing of the face. These symptoms are followed by others
+unmistakable: the patient becomes silent at times; at times evinces a
+weakness for sentimental expressions; flushes easily; is easily
+depressed; will sit for hours looking at one person; and, if not
+checked, will exhibit impulsive symptoms of affection for the opposite
+sex. The strangest symptom of all, however, is the physical change in
+the patient, whose features and figure, under the trained eye of the
+observer, gradually from day to day assume the symmetry and charm of a
+beauty almost unearthly, sometimes accompanied by a spiritual pallor
+which is unmistakable in confirming the diagnosis, and which, Dr. Lamour
+believes, presages the inexorable approach of immortality.
+
+"There is no known remedy for Lamour's Disease. The only case on record
+is the case of the young lady described by Dr. Lamour, who watched her
+for years with unexampled patience and enthusiasm; finally, in the
+interest of science, marrying his patient in order to devote his life
+to a study of her symptoms. Unfortunately, some of these disappeared
+early--within a week--but the curious manifestation of physical beauty
+remained, and continued to increase daily to a dazzling radiance, with
+no apparent injury to the patient. Dr. Lamour, unfortunately, died
+before his investigations, covering over forty years, could be
+completed; his widow survived him for a day or two only, leaving sixteen
+children.
+
+"Here is a wide and unknown field for medical men to investigate. It is
+safe to say that the physician who first discovers the bacillus of
+Lamour's Disease and the proper remedy to combat it will reap as his
+reward a glory and renown imperishable. Lamour's Disease is a disease
+not yet understood--a disease whose termination is believed to be
+fatal--a strange disease which seems to render radiant and beautiful the
+features of the patient, brightening them with the forewarning of
+impending death and the splendid resurrection of immortality."
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons caressed his chin reflectively. "_Ex_actly,
+Miss Smith. So this is the disease which Dr. Hollis has chosen for her
+specialty. And only one case on record. _Ex_actly. Thank you."
+
+Miss Smith replaced the papers in the steel cylinder, slipped it into
+the pneumatic tube, sent it whizzing below to the safe-deposit vaults,
+and, saluting Mr. Keen with a pleasant inclination of her head, went out
+of the room.
+
+The Tracer turned in his chair, picked up the daily detective report,
+and scanned it until he came to the name Hollis. It appeared that the
+daily routine of Rosalind Hollis had not varied during the past three
+weeks. In the mornings she was good to the poor with bottles and pills;
+in the afternoons she tucked one of Lamour's famous sixteen volumes
+under her arm and walked to Central Park, where, with democratic
+simplicity, she sat on a secluded bench and pored over the symptoms of
+Lamour's Disease. About five she retired to her severely simple
+apartments in the big brownstone office building devoted to physicians,
+corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue. Here she took tea,
+read a little, dined all alone, and retired about nine. This was the
+guileless but determined existence of Rosalind Hollis, M.D., according
+to McConnell, the detective assigned to observe her.
+
+The Tracer refolded the report of his chief of detectives and
+pigeonholed it just as the door opened and a tall, well-built,
+attractive young man entered.
+
+Shyness was written all over him; he offered his hand to Mr. Keen with
+an embarrassed air and seated himself at that gentleman's invitation.
+
+"I'm almost sorry I ever began this sort of thing," he blurted out, like
+a big schoolboy appalled at his own misdemeanors. "The truth is, Mr.
+Keen, that the prospect of actually seeing a 'Carden Girl' alive has
+scared me through and through. I've a notion that my business with that
+sort of a girl ends when I've drawn her picture."
+
+"But surely," said the Tracer mildly, "you have some natural curiosity
+to see the living copy of your charming but inanimate originals, haven't
+you, Mr. Carden?"
+
+"Yes--oh, certainly. I'd like to see one of them alive--say out of a
+window, or from a cab. I should not care to be too close to her."
+
+"But merely seeing her does not commit you," interposed Mr. Keen,
+smiling. "She is far too busy, too much absorbed in her own affairs to
+take any notice of you. I understand that she has something of an
+aversion for men."
+
+"Aversion!"
+
+"Well, she excludes them as unnecessary to her existence."
+
+"Why?" asked Carden.
+
+"Because she has a mission in life," said Mr. Keen gravely.
+
+Carden looked out of the window. It was pleasant weather--June in all
+its early loveliness--the fifth day of June. The sixth was his birthday.
+
+"I've simply got to marry somebody before the day after to-morrow," he
+said aloud--"that is, if I want my legacy."
+
+"What!" demanded the Tracer sharply.
+
+Carden turned, pink and guilty. "I didn't tell you all the circumstances
+of my case," he said. "I suppose I ought to have done so."
+
+"_Ex_actly," said the Tracer severely. "Why is it necessary that you
+marry somebody before the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"Well, it's my twenty-fifth birthday--"
+
+"Somebody has left you money on condition that you marry before your
+twenty-fifth birthday? Is that it, Mr. Carden? An uncle? An imbecile
+grandfather? A sentimental aunt?"
+
+"My Aunt Tabby Van Beekman."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In Trinity churchyard. It's too late to expostulate with her, you see.
+Besides, it wouldn't have done any good when she was alive."
+
+The Tracer knitted his brows, musing, the points of his slim fingers
+joined.
+
+"She was very proud, very autocratic," said Carden. "I am the last of
+my race and my aunt was determined that the race should not die out with
+me. I don't want to marry and increase, but she's trying to make me. At
+all events, I am not going to marry any woman inferior to the type I
+have created with my pencil--what the public calls the 'Carden Girl.'
+And now you see that your discovery of this living type comes rather
+late. In two days I must be legally married if I want my Aunt Tabby's
+legacy; and to-day for the first time I hear of a girl who, you assure
+me, compares favorably to my copyrighted type, but who has a mission and
+an aversion to men. So you see, Mr. Keen, that the matter is perfectly
+hopeless."
+
+"I don't see anything of the kind," said Mr. Keen firmly.
+
+"What?--do you believe there is any chance--"
+
+"Of your falling in love within the next hour or so? Yes, I do. I think
+there is every chance of it. I am sure of it. But that is not the
+difficulty. The problem is far more complicated."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"_Ex_actly; how to marry that girl before day after to-morrow. That's
+the problem, Mr. Carden!--not whether you are capable of falling in
+love with her. I have seen her; I _know_ you can't avoid falling in
+love with her. Nobody could. I myself am on the verge of it; and I am
+fifty: you can't avoid loving her."
+
+"If that were so," said Carden gravely; "if I were really going to fall
+in love with her--I would not care a rap about my Aunt Tabby and her
+money--"
+
+"You ought to care about it for this young girl's sake. That legacy is
+virtually hers, not yours. She has a right to it. No man can ever give
+enough to the woman he loves; no man has ever done so. What _she_ gives
+and what _he_ gives are never a fair exchange. If you can balance the
+account in any measure, it is your duty to do it. Mr. Carden, if she
+comes to love you she may think it very fine that you bring to her your
+love, yourself, your fame, your talents, your success, your position,
+your gratifying income. But I tell you it's not enough to balance the
+account. It is never enough--no, not all your devotion to her included!
+You can never balance the account on earth--all you can do is to try to
+balance it materially and spiritually. Therefore I say, endow her with
+_all_ your earthly goods. Give all you can in every way to lighten as
+much as possible man's hopeless debt to all women who have ever loved."
+
+"You talk about it as though I were already committed," said Carden,
+astonished.
+
+"You are, morally. For a month I have, without her knowledge, it is
+true, invaded the privacy of a very lovely young girl--studied her
+minutely, possessed myself of her history, informed myself of her
+habits. What excuse had I for this unless I desired her happiness and
+yours? Nobody could offer me any inducement to engage in such a practice
+unless I believed that the means might justify a moral conclusion. And
+the moral conclusion of this investigation is your marriage to her."
+
+"Certainly," said Carden uneasily, "but how are we going to accomplish
+it by to-morrow? How is it going to be accomplished at all?"
+
+The Tracer of Lost Persons rose and began to pace the long rug, clasping
+his hands behind his back. Minute after minute sped; Carden stared
+alternately at Mr. Keen and at the blue sky through the open window.
+
+"It is seldom," said Mr. Keen with evident annoyance, "that I personally
+take any spectacular part in the actual and concrete demonstrations
+necessary to a successful conclusion of a client's case. But I've got to
+do it this time."
+
+He went to a cupboard, picked out a gray wig and gray side whiskers and
+deliberately waved them at Carden.
+
+"You see what these look like?" he demanded.
+
+"Y-yes."
+
+"Very well. It is now noon. Do you know the Park? Do you happen to
+recollect a shady turn in the path after you cross the bridge over the
+swan lake? Here; I'll draw it for you. Now, here is the lake; here's the
+esplanade and fountain, you see. Here's the path. You follow
+it--so!--around the lake, across the bridge, then following the lake to
+the right--so!--then up the wooded slope to the left--so! Now, here is a
+bench. I mark it Number One. _She_ sits there with her book--there she
+is!"
+
+"If she looks like _that_--" began Carden. And they both laughed with
+the slightest trace of excitement.
+
+"Here is Bench Number Two!" resumed the Tracer. "Here you sit--and there
+you are!"
+
+[Illustration: MR. KEEN'S SKETCH OF THE RENDEZVOUS]
+
+"Thanks," said Carden, laughing again.
+
+"Now," continued the Tracer, "you must be there at one o'clock. She will
+be there at one-thirty, or earlier perhaps. A little later I will become
+benignly visible. Your part is merely a thinking part; you are to do
+nothing, say nothing, unless spoken to. And when you are spoken to you
+are to acquiesce in whatever anybody says to you, and you are to do
+whatever anybody requests you to do. And, above all, don't be surprised
+at _anything_ that may happen. You'll be nervous enough; I expect that.
+You'll probably color up and flush and fidget; I expect that; I count on
+that. But don't lose your nerve entirely; and don't think of attempting
+to escape."
+
+"Escape! From what? From whom?"
+
+"From her."
+
+"_Her?_"
+
+"Are you going to follow my instructions?" demanded the Tracer of Lost
+Persons.
+
+"I--y-yes, of course."
+
+"Very well, then, I am going to rub some of this under your eyes." And
+Mr. Keen produced a make-up box and, walking over to Carden, calmly
+darkened the skin under his eyes.
+
+"I look as though I had been on a bat!" exclaimed Carden, surveying
+himself in a mirror. "Do you think any girl could find any attraction in
+such a countenance?"
+
+"_She_ will," observed the Tracer meaningly. "Now, Mr. Carden, one last
+word: The moment you find yourself in love with her, and the first
+moment you have the chance to do so decently, make love to her. She
+won't dismiss you; she will repulse you, of course, but she won't let
+you go. I know what I am saying; all I ask of you is to promise on your
+honor to carry out these instructions. Do you promise?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then here is the map of the rendezvous which I have drawn. Be there
+promptly. Good morning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+At one o'clock that afternoon a young man earnestly consulting a map
+might have been seen pursuing his solitary way through Central Park.
+Fresh green foliage arched above him, flecking the path with fretted
+shadow and sunlight; the sweet odor of flowering shrubs saturated the
+air; the waters of the lake sparkled where swans swept to and fro, snowy
+wings spread like sails to the fitful June wind.
+
+"This," he murmured, pausing at a shaded bend in the path, "must be
+Bench Number One. I am not to sit on that. This must be Bench Number
+Two. I _am_ to sit on that. So here I am," he added nervously, seating
+himself and looking about him with the caution of a cat in a strange
+back yard.
+
+There was nobody in sight. Reassured, he ventured to drop one knee over
+the other and lean upon his walking stick. For a few minutes he remained
+in this noncommittal attitude, alert at every sound, anxious,
+uncomfortable, dreading he knew not what. A big, fat, gray squirrel
+racing noisily across the fallen leaves gave him a shock. A number of
+birds came to look at him--or so it appeared to him, for in the
+inquisitive scrutiny of a robin he fancied he divined sardonic meaning,
+and in the blank yellow stare of a purple grackle, a sinister
+significance out of all proportion to the size of the bird.
+
+"What an absurd position to be in!" he thought. And suddenly he was
+seized with a desire to flee.
+
+He didn't because he had promised not to, but the desire persisted to
+the point of mania. Oh, how he could run if he only hadn't promised not
+to! His entire being tingled with the latent possibilities of a burst of
+terrific speed. He wanted to scuttle away like a scared rabbit. The pace
+of the kangaroo would be slow in comparison. What a record he could make
+if he hadn't promised not to.
+
+He crossed his knees the other way and brooded. The gray squirrel
+climbed the bench and nosed his pockets for possible peanuts, then
+hopped off hopefully toward a distant nursemaid and two children.
+
+Growing more alarmed every time he consulted his watch Carden attempted
+to stem his rising panic with logic and philosophy, repeating: "Steady!
+my son! Don't act like this! You're not obliged to marry her if you
+don't fall in love with her; and if you do, you won't mind marrying her.
+That is philosophy. That is logic. Oh, I wonder what will have happened
+to me by this time to-morrow! I wish it _were_ this time to-morrow! I
+wish it were this time next month! Then it would be all over. Then it
+would be--"
+
+His muttering speech froze on his lips. Rooted to his bench he sat
+staring at a distant figure approaching--the figure of a young girl in a
+summer gown.
+
+Nearer, nearer she came, walking with a free-limbed, graceful step, head
+high, one arm clasping a book.
+
+That was the way the girls he drew would have walked had they ever
+lived. Even in the midst of his fright his artist's eyes noted that:
+noted the perfect figure, too, and the witchery of its grace and
+contour, and the fascinating poise of her head, and the splendid color
+of her hair; noted mechanically the flowing lines of her gown, and the
+dainty modeling of arm and wrist and throat and ear.
+
+Then, as she reached her bench and seated herself, she raised her eyes
+and looked at him. And for the first time in his life he realized that
+ideal beauty was but the pale phantom of the real and founded on
+something more than imagination and thought; on something of vaster
+import than fancy and taste and technical skill; that it was founded on
+Life itself--on breathing, living, palpitating, tremulous Life!--from
+which all true inspiration must come.
+
+Over and over to himself he was repeating: "Of course, it is perfectly
+impossible that I can be in love already. Love doesn't happen between
+two ticks of a watch. I am merely amazed at that girl's beauty; that is
+all. I am merely astounded in the presence of perfection; that is all.
+There is nothing more serious the matter with me. It isn't necessary for
+me to continue to look at her; it isn't vital to my happiness if I never
+saw her again. . . . That is--of course, I should like to see her,
+because I never did see living beauty such as hers in any woman. Not
+even in my pictures. What superb eyes! What a fascinately delicate nose!
+_What_ a nose! By Heaven, that nose _is_ a nose! I'll draw noses _that_
+way in future. My pictures are all out of drawing; I must fit arms into
+their sockets the way hers fit! I must remember the modeling of her
+eyelids, too--and that chin! and those enchanting hands--"
+
+She looked up leisurely from her book, surveyed him calmly, absent-eyed,
+then bent her head again to the reading.
+
+"There _is_ something the matter with me," he thought with a suppressed
+gulp. "I--if she looks at me again--with those iris-hued eyes of a
+young goddess--I--I think I'm done for. I believe I'm done for anyway.
+It seems rather mad to think it. But there _is_ something the matter--"
+
+She deliberately looked at him again.
+
+"It's all wrong for them to let loose a girl like that on people," he
+thought to himself, "all wrong. Everybody is bound to go mad over her.
+I'm going now. I'm mad already. I know I am, which proves I'm no
+lunatic. It isn't her beauty; it's the way she wears it--every motion,
+every breath of her. I know exactly what her voice is like. Anybody who
+looks into her eyes can see what her soul is like. She isn't out of
+drawing anywhere--physically or spiritually. And when a man sees a girl
+like that, why--why there's only one thing that can happen to him as far
+as I can see. And it doesn't take a year either. Heavens! How awfully
+remote from me she seems to be."
+
+She looked up again, calmly, but not at him. A kindly, gray-whiskered
+old gentleman came tottering and rocking into view, his rosy, wrinkled
+face beaming benediction on the world as he passed through it--on the
+sunshine dappling the undergrowth, on the furry squirrels sitting up on
+their hind legs to watch him pass, on the stray dickybird that hopped
+fearlessly in his path, at the young man sitting very rigid there on
+his bench, at the fair, sweet-faced girl who met his aged eyes with the
+gentlest of involuntary smiles. And Carden did not recognize him!
+
+Who could help smiling confidently into that benign face, with its gray
+hair and gray whiskers? Goodness radiated from every wrinkle.
+
+"Dr. Atwood!" exclaimed the girl softly as she rose to meet this
+marvelous imitation of Dr. Austin Atwood, the great specialist on
+children's diseases.
+
+The old man beamed weakly at her, halted, still beaming, fumbled for his
+eyeglasses, adjusted them, and peered closely into her face.
+
+"Bless my soul," he smiled, "our pretty Dr. Hollis!"
+
+"I--I did not suppose you would remember me," she said, rosy with
+pleasure.
+
+"Remember you? Surely, surely." He made her a quaint, old-fashioned bow,
+turned, and peeped across the walk at Carden. And Carden, looking
+straight into his face, did not know the old man, who turned to Dr.
+Hollis again with many mysterious nods of his doddering head.
+
+"You're watching him, too, are you?" he chuckled, leaning toward her.
+
+"Watching whom, Dr. Atwood?" she asked surprised.
+
+"Hush, child! I thought you had noticed that unfortunate and afflicted
+young man opposite."
+
+Dr. Hollis looked curiously at Carden, then at the old gentleman with
+gray whiskers.
+
+"Please sit down, Dr. Atwood, and tell me," she murmured. "I have
+noticed nothing in particular about the young man on the bench there."
+And she moved to give him room; and the young man opposite stared at
+them both as though bereft of reason.
+
+"A heavy book for small hands, my child," said the old gentleman in his
+quaintly garrulous fashion, peering with dimmed eyes at the volume in
+her lap.
+
+She smiled, looking around at him.
+
+"My, my!" he said, tremblingly raising his eyeglasses to scan the title
+on the page; "Dr. Lamour's famous works! Are _you_ studying Lamour,
+child?"
+
+"Yes," she said with that charming inflection youth reserves for age.
+
+"Astonishing!" he murmured. "The coincidence is more than remarkable. A
+physician! And studying Lamour's Disease! Incredible!"
+
+"Is there anything strange in that, Dr. Atwood?" she smiled.
+
+"Strange!" He lowered his voice, peering across at Carden. "Strange,
+did you say? Look across the path at that poor young man sitting there!"
+
+"Yes," she said, perplexed, "I see him."
+
+"_What_ do you see?" whispered the old gentleman in a shakily portentous
+voice. "Here you sit reading about what others have seen; now what do
+_you_ see?"
+
+"Why, only a man--rather young--"
+
+"No _symptoms_?"
+
+"Symptoms? Of what?"
+
+The old gentleman folded his withered hands over his cane. "My child,"
+he said, "for a year I have had that unfortunate young man under secret
+observation. He was not aware of it; it never entered his mind that I
+could be observing _him_ with minutest attention. He may have supposed
+there was nothing the matter with him. He was in error. I have studied
+him carefully. Look closer! _Are_ there dark circles under his eyes--or
+are there not?" he ended in senile triumph.
+
+"There are," she began, puzzled, "but I--but of what interest to me--"
+
+"Compare his symptoms with the symptoms in that book you are studying,"
+said the old gentleman hoarsely.
+
+"Do you mean--do you suppose--" she stammered, turning her eyes on
+Carden, who promptly blushed to his ears and began to fidget.
+
+"_Every symptom_," muttered the old gentleman. "Poor, poor young man!"
+
+She had seen Carden turn a vivid pink; she now saw him fidget with his
+walking stick; she discovered the blue circles under his eyes. Three
+symptoms at once!
+
+"Do you believe it _possible_?" she whispered excitedly under her breath
+to the old gentleman beside her. "It seems incredible! Such a rare
+disease! Only one single case ever described and studied! It seems
+impossible that I could be so fortunate as actually to see a case! Tell
+me, Dr. Atwood, do you believe that young man is really afflicted with
+Lamour's Disease?"
+
+"There is but one way to be absolutely certain," said the old gentleman
+in a solemn voice, "and that is to study him; corroborate your
+suspicions by observing his pulse and temperature, as did Dr. Lamour."
+
+"But--how can I?" she faltered. "I--he would probably object to becoming
+a patient of mine--"
+
+"Ask him, child! Ask him."
+
+"I have not courage--"
+
+"Courage should be the badge of your profession," said the old
+gentleman gravely. "When did a good physician ever show the white
+feather in the cause of humanity?"
+
+"I--I know, but this requires a different sort of courage."
+
+"How," persisted the old gentleman, "can you confirm your very natural
+suspicions concerning this unfortunate young man unless you corroborate
+your observations by studying him at close range? Besides, already it
+seems to me that certain unmistakable signs are visible; I mean that
+strange physical phase which Dr. Lamour dwells on: the symmetry of
+feature and limb, the curiously spiritual beauty. Do you not notice
+these? Or is my sight so dim that I only imagine it?"
+
+"He is certainly symmetrical--and--in a certain way--almost handsome in
+regard to features," she admitted, looking at Carden.
+
+"Poor, poor boy!" muttered the old gentleman, wagging his gray whiskers.
+"I am too old to help him--too old to dream of finding a remedy for the
+awful malady which I am now convinced has seized him. I shall study him
+no more. It is useless. All I can do now is to mention his case to some
+young, vigorous, ambitious physician--some specialist--"
+
+"Don't!" she whispered almost fiercely, "don't do that, Dr. Atwood! I
+want him, please! I--you helped me to discover him, you see. And his
+malady is to be my specialty. Please, do you mind if I keep him all to
+myself and study him?"
+
+"But you refused, child."
+
+"I didn't mean to. I--I didn't exactly see how I was to study him. But I
+must study him! Oh, I _must_! There will surely be some way. Please let
+me. You discovered him, I admit, but I will promise you faithfully to
+devote my entire life to studying him, as the great Lamour devoted his
+life for forty years to his single patient."
+
+"But Dr. Lamour married his patient," said the Tracer mildly.
+
+"He--I--that need not be necessary--"
+
+"But if it should prove necessary?"
+
+"I--you--"
+
+"Answer me, child."
+
+She stared across at Carden, biting her red lips. He turned pink
+promptly and fidgeted.
+
+"He _has_ got it!" she whispered excitedly. "Oh, _do_ you mind if I take
+him for mine? I am perfectly wild to begin on him!"
+
+"You have not yet answered my question," said the old gentleman gravely.
+"Do you lack the courage to marry him if it becomes necessary to do so
+in order to devote your entire life to studying him?"
+
+"Oh--it _cannot_ be necessary--"
+
+"You lack the courage."
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Braver things have been done by those of your profession who have gone
+among lepers," said the old gentleman sadly.
+
+She flushed up instantly; her eyes sparkled; her head proudly high,
+delicate nostrils dilated.
+
+"I am not afraid!" she said. "If it ever becomes necessary, I _can_ show
+courage and devotion, as well as those of my profession who minister to
+the lepers of Molokai! Yes; I do promise you to marry him if I cannot
+otherwise study him. And I promise you solemnly to devote my entire life
+to observing his symptoms and searching for proper means to combat them.
+My one ambition in life is personally to observe and study a case of
+Lamour's Disease, and to give my entire life to investigating its
+origin, its course, and its cure."
+
+The old gentleman rose, bowing with that quaintly obsolete courtesy
+which was in vogue in his youth.
+
+"I am contented to leave him exclusively to you, Dr. Hollis. And I wish
+you happiness in your life's work--and success in your cure of this
+unhappy young man."
+
+Hat in hand, he bowed again as he tottered past her, muttering and
+smiling to himself and shaking his trembling head as he went rocking on
+unsteady legs out into the sunshine, where the nursemaids and children
+flocked along the lake shore throwing peanuts to the waterfowl and
+satiated goldfish.
+
+Dr. Hollis looked after him, her small hand buried among the pages of
+her open book. Carden viewed his disappearing figure with guileless
+emotions. He was vaguely aware that something important was about to
+happen to him. And it did before he was prepared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+When Rosalind Hollis found herself on her feet again a slight sensation
+of fright checked her for a moment. Then, resolutely suppressing such
+unworthy weakness, the lofty inspiration of her mission in life
+dominated her, and she stepped forward undaunted. And Carden, seeing her
+advance toward him, arose in astonishment to meet her.
+
+For a second they stood facing each other, he astounded, she a trifle
+pale but firm. Then in a low voice she asked his pardon for disturbing
+him.
+
+"I am Rosalind Hollis, a physician," she said quietly, "and physicians
+are sometimes obliged to do difficult things in the interest of their
+profession. It is dreadfully difficult for me to speak to you in this
+way. But"--she looked fearlessly at him--"I am confident you will not
+misinterpret what I have done."
+
+He managed to assure her that he did not misinterpret it.
+
+She regarded him steadily; she examined the dark circles under his eyes;
+she coolly observed his rising color under her calm inspection; she saw
+him fidgeting with his walking stick. She _must_ try his pulse!
+
+"Would you mind if I asked you a few questions in the interest of
+science?" she said earnestly.
+
+"As a m-m-matter of fact," he stammered, "I don't know much about
+science. Awfully glad to do anything I can, you know."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean it that way," she reassured him. A hint of a smile
+tinted her eyes with brilliant amethyst. "Would you mind if I sat here
+for a few moments? _Could_ you overlook this horrid unconventionality
+long enough for me to explain why I have spoken to you?"
+
+"I could indeed!" he said, so anxiously cordial that her lovely face
+grew serious and she hesitated. But he was standing aside, hat off,
+placing the bench at her disposal, and she seated herself, placing her
+book on the bench beside her.
+
+"Would you mind sitting here for a few moments?" she asked him gravely.
+
+Dazed, scarcely crediting the evidence of his senses, he took possession
+of the end of the bench with the silent obedience of a schoolboy. His
+attitude was irreproachable. She was grateful for this, and her
+satisfaction with herself for not having misjudged him renewed her
+confidence in him, in herself, and in the difficult situation.
+
+She began, quietly, by again telling him her name and profession; where
+she lived, and that she was studying to be a specialist, though she did
+not intimate what that specialty was to be.
+
+Outwardly composed and attentively deferential, his astonishment at
+times dominated a stronger sentiment that seemed to grow and expand with
+her every word, seizing him in a fierce possession absolutely and
+hopelessly complete.
+
+The bewildering fascination of her mastered him. No cool analysis of
+what his senses were confirming could be necessary to convince him of
+his condition. Every word of hers, every gesture, every inflection of
+her sweet, clear voice, every lifting of her head, her eyes, her
+perfectly gloved hands, only repeated to him what he knew was a
+certainty. Never had he looked upon such physical loveliness; never had
+he dreamed of such a voice.
+
+She had asked him a question, and, absorbed in the pure delight of
+looking at her, he had not comprehended or answered. She flushed
+sensitively, accepting his silence as refusal, and he came out of his
+trance hastily.
+
+"I beg your pardon; I did not quite understand your question, Miss
+Hollis--I mean, Dr. Hollis."
+
+"I asked you if you minded my noting your pulse," she said.
+
+He stretched out his right hand; she stripped off her glove, laid the
+tip of her middle finger on his wrist, and glanced down at the gold
+watch which she held.
+
+"I am wondering," he said, laughing uncertainly, "whether you believe me
+to be ill. Of course it is easy to see that you have found something
+unusual about me--something of particular interest to a physician. Is
+there anything very dreadful going to happen to me, Dr. Hollis? I feel
+perfectly well."
+
+"Are you sure you feel well?" she asked, so earnestly that the smile on
+his lips faded out.
+
+"Absolutely. Is my pulse queer?"
+
+"It is not normal."
+
+He could easily account for that, but he said nothing.
+
+She questioned him for a few minutes, noted his pulse again, looked
+closely at the bluish circles under his eyes. Naturally he flushed up
+and grew restless under the calm, grave, beautiful eyes.
+
+"I--I have an absolutely new and carefully sterilized thermometer--" She
+drew it from a tiny gold-initialed pocket case, and looked wistfully at
+him.
+
+"You want to put that into my mouth?" he asked, astonished.
+
+"If you don't mind."
+
+She held it up, shook it once or twice, and deliberately inserted it
+between his lips. And there he sat, round-eyed, silent, the end of the
+thermometer protruding at a rakish angle from the corner of his mouth.
+And he grew redder and redder.
+
+"I _don't_ wish to alarm you," she was saying, "but all this is so
+deeply significant, so full of vital interest to me--to the world, to
+science--"
+
+"_What_ have I got, in Heaven's name?" he said thickly, the thermometer
+wiggling in his mouth.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed with soft enthusiasm, clasping her pretty ungloved
+hands, "I cannot be sure yet--I dare not be too sanguine--"
+
+"Do you mean that you _want_ me to have something queer?" he blurted
+out, while the thermometer wiggled with every word he uttered.
+
+"N-no, of course, I don't _want_ you to be ill," she said hastily.
+"Only, if you _are_ ill it will be a wonderful thing for me. I
+mean--a--that I am intensely interested in certain symptoms which--"
+
+She gently withdrew the glass tube from his lips and examined it
+carefully.
+
+"_Is_ there anything the matter?" he insisted, looking at the instrument
+over her shoulder.
+
+She did not reply; pure excitement rendered her speechless.
+
+"I seem to _feel_ all right," he added uneasily. "If you really believe
+that there's anything wrong with me, I'll stop in to see my doctor."
+
+"Your doctor!" she repeated, appalled.
+
+"Yes, certainly. Why not?"
+
+"Don't do that! Please don't do that! I--why _I_ discovered this case. I
+beg you most earnestly to let me observe it. You don't understand the
+importance of it! You don't begin to dream of the rarity of this case!
+How much it means to me!"
+
+He flushed up. "Do you intend to intimate that I am afflicted with some
+sort of rare and s-s-trange d-d-disease?" he stammered.
+
+"I dare not pronounce upon it too confidently," she said with
+enthusiasm; "I have not yet absolutely determined the nature of the
+disease. But, oh, I am beginning to hope--"
+
+"Then I _am_ diseased!" he faltered. "I've got _something_ anyhow; is
+that it? Only you are not yet perfectly sure what it is called! Is that
+the truth, Miss Hollis?"
+
+"How can I answer positively until I have had time to observe these
+symptoms? It requires time to be certain. I do not wish to alarm you,
+but it is my duty to say to you that you should immediately place
+yourself under medical observation."
+
+"You think that?"
+
+"I do; I am convinced of it. Please understand me; I do not pronounce
+upon these visible symptoms; I do not express an unqualified opinion;
+but I could be in a position to do so if you consent to place yourself
+under my observations and care. For these suspicious symptoms are not
+only very plainly apparent to me, but were even noted by that old
+gentleman whom you may perhaps have observed conversing with me."
+
+"Yes, I saw him. Who is he?"
+
+"Dr. Austin Atwood," said the girl solemnly.
+
+"Oh! And you say he also observed something queer about me? What did he
+see? Are there spots on me? Am I turning any remarkable color? Am I--"
+And in the very midst of his genuine alarm he suddenly remembered the
+make-up box and what the Tracer of Lost Persons had done to his eyes.
+Was _that_ it? Where was the Tracer, anyway? He had promised to appear.
+And then Carden recollected the gray wig and whiskers that the Tracer
+had waved at him from the cupboard, bidding him note them well. _Could_
+that beaming, benignant, tottering old gentleman have been the Tracer of
+Lost Persons himself? And the same instant Carden was sure of it, spite
+of the miraculous change in the man.
+
+Then logic came to his aid; and, deducing with care and patience, an
+earnest conviction grew within him that the dark circles under his eyes
+and the tottering old gentleman resembling Dr. Austin Atwood had a great
+deal to do with this dreadful disease which Dr. Hollis desired to study.
+
+He looked at the charming girl beside him, and she looked back at him
+very sweetly, very earnestly, awaiting his decision.
+
+For a moment he realized that she had really scared him, and in the
+reaction of relief an overwhelming desire to laugh seized him. He
+managed to suppress it, to compose himself. Then he remembered the
+Tracer's admonition to acquiesce in everything, do what he was told to
+do, not to run away, and to pay his court at the first decent
+opportunity.
+
+He had no longer any desire to escape; he was quite willing to do
+anything she desired.
+
+"Do you really want to study me, Dr. Hollis?" he asked, feeling like a
+hypocrite.
+
+"Indeed I do," she replied fervently.
+
+"You believe me worth studying?"
+
+"Oh, truly, truly, you are! You don't suspect--you cannot conceive how
+important you have suddenly become to me."
+
+"Then I think you had better take my case, Dr. Hollis," he said
+seriously. "I begin now to realize that you believe me to be a sort of
+freak--an afflicted curiosity, and that, in the interest of medicine, I
+ought to go to an asylum or submit myself to the ceaseless observation
+of a competent private physician."
+
+"I--I think it best for you to place yourself in my care," she said.
+"Will you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I will. I'll do anything in the world you ask."
+
+"That is very--very generous, very noble of you!" she exclaimed,
+flushing with excitement and delight. "It means a great deal to me--it
+means, perhaps, a fame that I scarcely dared dream of even in my most
+enthusiastic years. I am too grateful to express my gratitude
+coherently; I am trying to say to you that I thank you; that I recognize
+in you those broad, liberal, generous qualities which, from your
+appearance and bearing, I--I thought perhaps you must possess."
+
+She colored again very prettily; he bowed, and ventured to remind her
+that she had not yet given him the privilege of naming himself.
+
+"That is true!" she said, surprised. "I had quite forgotten it." But
+when he named himself she raised her head, startled.
+
+"Victor Carden!" she repeated. "You are the _artist_, Victor Carden!"
+
+"Yes," he said, watching her dilated eyes like two violet-tinted jewels.
+
+For a minute she sat looking at him; and imperceptibly a change came
+into her face, and its bewildering beauty softened as the vivid tints
+died out, leaving her cheeks almost pale.
+
+"It is--a pity," she said under her breath. All the excitement, all the
+latent triumph, all the scarcely veiled eager enthusiasm had gone from
+her now.
+
+"A pity?" he repeated, smiling.
+
+"Yes. I wish it had been only an ordinary man. I--why should this happen
+to you? You have done so much for us all--made us forget ourselves in
+the beauty of what you offer us. Why should this happen to _you_!"
+
+"But you have not told me yet what has happened to me, Miss Hollis."
+
+She looked up, almost frightened.
+
+"_Are_ you our Victor Carden? I do not wish to believe it! You have done
+so much for the world--you have taught us to understand and desire all
+that is noble and upright and clean and beautiful!--to desire it, to
+aspire toward it, to venture to live the good, true, wholesome lives
+that your penciled creations must lead--_must_ lead to wear such
+beautiful bodies and such divine eyes!"
+
+"Do _you_ care for my work?" he asked, astonished and moved.
+
+"I? Yes, of course I do. Who does not?"
+
+"Many," he replied simply.
+
+"I am sorry for them," she said.
+
+They sat silent for a long while.
+
+At first his overwhelming desire was to tell her of the deception
+practiced upon her; but he could not do that, because in exposing
+himself he must fail in loyalty to the Tracer of Lost Persons. Besides,
+she would not believe him. She would think him mad if he told her that
+the old gentleman she had taken for Dr. Atwood was probably Mr. Keen,
+the Tracer of Lost Persons. Also, he himself was not absolutely certain
+about it. He had merely deduced as much.
+
+"Tell me," he said very gently, "what is the malady from which you
+believe I am suffering?"
+
+For a moment she remained silent, then, face averted, laid her finger on
+the book beside her.
+
+"That," she said unsteadily.
+
+He read aloud: "Lamour's Disease. A Treatise in sixteen volumes by Ero
+S. Lamour, M.D., M.S., F.B.A., M.F.H."
+
+"All that?" he asked guiltily.
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Carden. Are you laughing at me? Do you not believe
+me?" She had turned suddenly to confront him, surprising a humorous
+glimmer in his eyes.
+
+"I really do not believe I am seriously ill," he said, laughing in spite
+of her grave eyes.
+
+"Then perhaps you had better read a little about what Lamour describes
+as the symptoms of this malady," she said sadly.
+
+"Is it fatal?" he inquired.
+
+"Ultimately. That is why I desire to spend my life in studying means to
+combat it. That is why I desire you so earnestly to place yourself under
+my observation and let me try."
+
+"Tell me one thing," he said; "is it contagious? Is it infectious? No?
+Then I don't mind your studying me all you wish, Dr. Hollis. You may
+take my temperature every ten minutes if you care to. You may observe my
+pulse every five minutes if you desire. Only please tell me how this is
+to be accomplished; because, you see, I live in the Sherwood Studio
+Building, and you live on Madison Avenue."
+
+"I--I have a ward--a room--fitted up with every modern surgical
+device--every improvement," she said. "It adjoins my office. _Would_ you
+mind living there for a while--say for a week at first--until I can be
+perfectly certain in my diagnosis?"
+
+"Do you intend to put me to bed?" he asked, appalled.
+
+"Oh, no! Only I wish to watch you carefully and note your symptoms from
+moment to moment. I also desire to try the effects of certain medicines
+on you--"
+
+"What kind of medicines?" he asked uneasily.
+
+"I cannot tell yet. Perhaps antitoxin; I don't know; perhaps formalin
+later. Truly, Mr. Carden, this case has taken on a graver, a more
+intimate significance since I have learned who you are. I would have
+worked hard to save any life; I shall put my very heart and soul into my
+work to save you, who have done so much for us all."
+
+The trace of innocent emotion in her voice moved him.
+
+"I am really not ill," he said unsteadily. "I cannot let you think I
+am--"
+
+"Don't speak that way, Mr. Carden. I--I am perfectly miserable over it;
+I don't feel any happiness in my discovery now--not the least bit. I had
+rather live my entire life without seeing one case of Lamour's Disease
+than to believe you are afflicted with it."
+
+"But I'm not, Miss Hollis!--really, I am not--"
+
+She looked at him compassionately for a moment, then rose.
+
+"It is best that you should be informed as to your probable condition,"
+she said. "In Lamour's works, volume nine, you had better read exactly
+what Lamour says. Do you mind coming to the office with me, Mr. Carden?"
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes. The book is there. Do you mind coming?"
+
+"No--no, of course not." And, as they turned away together under the
+trees: "You don't intend to begin observing me this afternoon, do you?"
+he ventured.
+
+"I think it best if you can arrange your affairs. Can you, Mr. Carden?"
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose I can. Did you mean for me to begin to occupy that
+surgical bedroom at once?"
+
+"Do you mind?"
+
+"N-no. I'll telephone my servants to pack a steamer trunk and send it
+around to your apartment this evening. And--where am I to board?"
+
+"I have a dining room," she said simply. "My apartment consists of the
+usual number of servants and rooms, including my office, and my
+observation ward which you will occupy."
+
+He walked on, troubled.
+
+"I only w-want to ask one or two things, Dr. Hollis. Am I to be placed
+on a diet? I hate diets!"
+
+"Not at once."
+
+"May I smoke?"
+
+"Certainly," she said, smiling.
+
+"And you won't p-put me--send me to bed too early?"
+
+"Oh, no! The later you sit up the better, because I shall wish to take
+your temperature every ten minutes and I shall feel very sorry to arouse
+you."
+
+"You mean you are coming in to wake me up every ten minutes and put that
+tube in my mouth?" he asked, aghast.
+
+"Only every half-hour, Mr. Carden. Can't you stand it for a week?"
+
+"Well," he said, "I--I suppose I can if _you_ can. Only, upon my honor,
+there is really nothing the matter with me, and I'll prove it to you out
+of your own book."
+
+"I wish you could, Mr. Carden. I should be only too happy to give you
+back to the world with a clear bill of health if you can convince me I
+am wrong. Do you not believe me? Indeed, indeed I am not selfish and
+wicked enough to wish you this illness, no matter how rare it is!"
+
+"The rarer a disease is the madder it makes people who contract it," he
+said. "I should be the maddest man in Manhattan if I really did have
+Lamour's malady. But I haven't. There is only one malady afflicting me,
+and I am waiting for a suitable opportunity to tell you all about it,
+but--"
+
+"Tell me now," she said, raising her eyes to his.
+
+"Not now."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"I hope so. I will if I can, Miss Hollis."
+
+"But you must not fear to tell a physician about anything which troubles
+you, Mr. Carden."
+
+"I'll remember that," he said thoughtfully, as they emerged from the
+Park and crossed to Madison Avenue.
+
+A moment later he hailed a car and they both entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+No, there could be no longer any doubt in her mind as she went into her
+bedroom, closed the door, and, unhooking the telephone receiver, called
+up the great specialist in rare diseases, Dr. Austin Atwood, M.S.,
+F.B.A., M.F.H.
+
+"Dr. Atwood," she said with scarcely concealed emotion, "this is Dr.
+Rosalind Hollis."
+
+"How-de-do?" squeaked the aged specialist amiably.
+
+"Oh, I am well enough, thank you, doctor--except in spirits. Dr. Atwood,
+you were right! He _has_ got it, and I am perfectly wretched!"
+
+"_Who_ has got _what_?" retorted the voice of Atwood.
+
+"The unfortunate young gentleman we saw to-day in the Park."
+
+"What park?"
+
+"Why, Central Park, doctor."
+
+"Central Park! _I_ haven't been in Central Park for ten years, my
+child."
+
+"Why, Dr. Atwood!--A--_is_ this Dr. Austin Atwood with whom I am
+talking?"
+
+"Not the least doubt! And you are that pretty Dr. Hollis--Rosalind
+Hollis, who consulted me in those charity cases, are you not?"
+
+"I certainly am. And I wanted to say to you that I have the unfortunate
+patient now under closest observation here in my own apartment. I have
+given him the room next to the office. And, doctor, you were perfectly
+right. He shows every symptom of the disease--he is even inclined to
+sentimentalism; he begins to blush and fidget and look at me--a--in that
+unmistakable manner--not that he isn't well-bred and charming--indeed he
+is most attractive, and it grieves me dreadfully to see that he already
+is beginning to believe himself in love with the first person of the
+opposite sex he encounters--I mean that he--that I cannot mistake his
+attitude toward me--which is perfectly correct, only one cannot avoid
+seeing the curious infatuation--"
+
+"_What_ the dickens is all this?" roared the great specialist, and Dr.
+Hollis jumped.
+
+"I was only confirming your diagnosis, doctor," she explained meekly.
+
+"What diagnosis?"
+
+"Yours, doctor. I have confirmed it, I fear. And the certainty has made
+me perfectly miserable, because his is such a valuable life to the
+world, and he himself is such a splendid, wholesome, noble specimen of
+youth and courage, that I cannot bear to believe him incurably
+afflicted."
+
+"Good Heavens!" shouted the doctor, "_what_ has he got and _who_ is he?"
+
+"He is Victor Carden, the celebrated artist, and he has Lamour's
+Disease!" she gasped.
+
+There was a dead silence; then: "Keep him there until I come! Chloroform
+him if he attempts to escape!"
+
+And the great specialist rang off excitedly.
+
+So Rosalind Hollis went back to the lamp-lit office where, in a
+luxurious armchair, Carden was sitting, contentedly poring over the
+ninth volume of Lamour's great treatise and smoking his second cigar.
+
+"Dr. Atwood is coming here," she said in a discouraged voice, as he rose
+with alacrity to place her chair.
+
+"Oh! What for?"
+
+"T-to see you, Mr. Carden."
+
+"Who? Me? Great Scott! I don't want to be slapped and pinched and polled
+by a man! I didn't expect that, you know. I'm willing enough to have you
+observe me in the interest of humanity--"
+
+"But, Mr. Carden, he is only called in for consultation. I--I have a
+dreadful sort of desperate hope that perhaps I may have made a mistake;
+that possibly I am in error."
+
+"No doubt you are," he said cheerfully. "Let me read a few more pages,
+Dr. Hollis, and then I think I shall be all ready to dispute my
+symptoms, one by one, and convince you what really is the trouble with
+me. And, by the way, did Dr. Atwood seem a trifle astonished when you
+told him about me?"
+
+"A trifle--yes," she said uncertainly. "He is a very, very old man; he
+forgets. But he is coming."
+
+"Oh! And didn't he appear to recollect seeing me in the Park?"
+
+"N-not clearly. He is very old, you know. But he is coming here."
+
+"_Ex_actly--as a friend of mine puts it," smiled Carden. "May I be
+permitted to use your telephone a moment?"
+
+"By all means, Mr. Carden. You will find it there in my bedroom."
+
+So he entered her pretty bedroom and, closing the door tightly, called
+up the Tracer of Lost Persons.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Keen? This is Mr. Carden. I'm head over heels in love.
+I simply must win her, and I'm going to try. If I don't--if she will
+not listen to me--I'll certainly go to smash. And what I want you to do
+is to prevent Atwood from butting in. Do you understand? . . . Yes, Dr.
+Austin Atwood. Keep him away somehow. . . . Yes, I'm here, at Dr.
+Hollis's apartments, under anxious observation. . . . She is the _only_
+woman in the world! I'm mad about her--and getting madder every moment!
+She is the most perfectly splendid specimen of womanhood--_what_? Oh,
+yes; I rang you up to ask you whether it was _you_ in the Park
+to-day?--that old gentleman--_What!_ Yes, in Central Park. Yes, this
+afternoon! No, he didn't resemble you; and Dr. Hollis took him for Dr.
+Atwood. . . . What are you laughing about? . . . I can _hear_ you
+laughing. . . . _Was_ it you? . . . What do I think? Why, I don't know
+exactly what to think, but I suppose it must have been you. Was it?
+. . . Oh, I see. You don't wish me to know. Certainly, you are quite
+right. Your clients have no business behind the scenes. I only asked out
+of curiosity. . . . All right. Good-by."
+
+He came back to the lamp-lit office, which was more of a big, handsome,
+comfortable living room than a physician's quarters, and for a moment or
+two he stood on the threshold, looking around.
+
+In the pleasant, subdued light of the lamp Rosalind Hollis looked up
+and around, smiling involuntarily to see him standing there; then,
+serious, silent, she dropped her eyes to the pages of the volume he had
+discarded--volume nine of Lamour's great works.
+
+Even with the evidence before her, corroborated in these inexorably
+scientific pages which she sat so sadly turning, she found it almost
+impossible to believe that this big, broad-shouldered, attractive young
+man could be fatally stricken.
+
+Twice her violet eyes stole toward him; twice the thick lashes veiled
+them, and the printed pages on her knee sprang into view, and the cold
+precision of the type confirmed her fears remorselessly:
+
+"The trained scrutiny of the observer will detect in the victim of this
+disease a peculiar and indefinable charm--a strange symmetry which, on
+closer examination, reveals traces of physical beauty almost
+superhuman--"
+
+Again her eyes were lifted to Carden; again she dropped her white lids.
+Her worst fears were confirmed.
+
+Meanwhile he stood on the threshold looking at her, his pulses racing,
+his very soul staring through his eyes; and, within him, every sense
+clamoring out revolt at the deception, demanding confession and its
+penalty.
+
+"I can't stand this!" he blurted out; and she looked up quickly, her
+face blanched with foreboding.
+
+"Are you in pain?" she asked.
+
+"No--not that sort of pain! I--_won't_ you please believe that I am not
+ill? I'm imposing on you. I'm an impostor! There's nothing whatever the
+trouble with me except--something that I want to tell you--if you'll let
+me--"
+
+"Why should you hesitate to confide in a physician, Mr. Carden?"
+
+He came forward slowly. She laid her small hand on the empty chair which
+faced hers and he sank into it, clasping his restless hands under his
+chin.
+
+"You are feeling depressed," she said gently. Depression was a
+significant symptom. Three chapters were devoted to it.
+
+"I'm depressed, of course. I'm horribly depressed and ashamed of myself,
+because there is nothing on earth the matter with me, and I've let you
+think there is."
+
+She smiled mournfully; this was another symptom of a morbid state. She
+turned, unconsciously, to page 379 to verify her observation.
+
+"See here, Miss Hollis," he broke out, "haven't I any chance to
+convince you that I am not ill? I want to be honest without involving
+a--a friend of mine. I can't endure this deception. Won't you let me
+prove to you that these symptoms are--are only significant of something
+else?"
+
+She looked straight at him, considering him in silence.
+
+"Let us begin with those dark circles under my eyes," he said
+desperately. "I found some cold-cream in my room and--look! They are
+practically gone! At any rate, if there is a sort of shadow left it's
+because I use my eyes in my profession."
+
+"Dr. Lamour says that the dark circles disappear, anyway," said the
+girl, unconvinced. "Cold-cream had nothing to do with it."
+
+"But it _did_! Really it did. And as for the other symptoms, I--well, I
+can't help my pulses when y-you t-t-touch me."
+
+"Please, Mr. Carden."
+
+"I don't mean to be impertinent. I am trying my hardest to tell the
+truth. And my pulses _do_ gallop when you test them; they're galloping
+now! This very moment!"
+
+"Let me try them," she said coolly, laying her hand on his wrist.
+
+"Didn't I say so!" he insisted grimly. "And I'm turning red, too. But
+those symptoms mean something else; they mean _you_!"
+
+"Mr. Carden!"
+
+"I can't help saying so--"
+
+"I know it," she said soothingly; "these sentimental outbursts are part
+of the disease--"
+
+"Good Heavens! _Won't_ you try to believe me! There's nothing in the
+world the matter with me except that I am--am--p-p-perfectly
+f-f-fascinated--"
+
+"You must struggle against it, Mr. Carden. That is only part of the--"
+
+"It isn't! It isn't! It's you! It's your mere presence, your
+personality, your charm, your beauty, your loveliness, your--"
+
+"Mr. Carden, I beg of you! I--it is part of my duty to observe symptoms,
+but--but you are making it very hard for me--very difficult--"
+
+"I am only proving to you that it isn't Lamour's Disease which does
+stunts with my pulses, my temperature, my color. I'm not morbid except
+when I realize my deception. I'm not depressed except when I think how
+far you are from me--how far above me--how far out of reach of such a
+man as I am--how desperately I--I--"
+
+"D-don't you think I had better administer a s-s-sedative, Mr. Carden?"
+she said, distressed.
+
+"I don't care. I'll take anything you give me--as long as _you_ give it
+to me. I'll swallow pint after pint of pills! I'll fletcherize 'em! I'll
+luxuriate in poison--anything--"
+
+She was hastily running through the pages of the ninth volume to see
+whether the symptoms of sentimental excitement ever turned into frenzy.
+
+"What can you learn from that book?" he insisted, leaning forward to see
+what she was reading. "Anyway, Dr. Lamour married his patient so early
+in the game that all the symptoms disappeared. And I believe the trouble
+with his patient was my trouble. She had every symptom of it until he
+married her! She was in love with him, that is absolutely all!"
+
+Rosalind Hollis raised her beautiful, incredulous eyes.
+
+"What do you mean, Mr. Carden?"
+
+"I mean that, in my opinion, there's no such disease as Lamour's
+Disease. That young girl was in love with him. Then he married her at
+last, and--presto!--all the symptoms vanished--the pulse, the
+temperature, the fidgets, the blushes, the moods, the whole business!"
+
+"W-what about the strangely curious manifestations of physical
+beauty--superhuman symmetry, Mr. Carden?"
+
+"Do you notice them in _me_?" he gasped.
+
+"A--yes--in a m-modified measure--"
+
+"In _me_?"
+
+"Certainly!" she said firmly; but the slow glow suffusing her cheeks was
+disconcerting her. Then his own face began to reflect the splendid color
+in hers; their eyes met, dismayed.
+
+"There are sixteen volumes about this disease," she said. "There _must_
+be such a disease!"
+
+"There is," he said. "I have it badly. But I never had it before I first
+saw you in the Park!"
+
+"Mr. Carden--this is the wildest absurdity--"
+
+"I know it. Wildness is a symptom. I'm mad as a hatter. I've got every
+separate symptom, and I wish it was infectious and contagious and
+catching and fatal!"
+
+She made an effort to turn the pages to the chapter entitled "Manias and
+Illusions," but he laid his hand across the book and his clear eyes
+defied her.
+
+"Mr. Carden--"
+
+Her smooth hand trembled under his, then, suddenly nerveless, relaxed.
+With an effort she lifted her head; their eyes met, spellbound.
+
+"_You_ have _every_ symptom," he said unsteadily--"every one! What have
+you to say?"
+
+Her fascinated eyes held his.
+
+"What have you to say?" he repeated under his breath--"you, with every
+symptom, and your heavenly radiant beauty to confirm them--that splendid
+youthful loveliness which blinds and stuns me as I look--as I speak--as
+I tell you that I love you. That is my malady; that is the beginning and
+the end of it; love!"
+
+She sat speechless, immovable, as one under enchantment.
+
+"All my life," he said, "I have spent in painting shadows. But the
+shadows were those dim celestial shapes cast by your presence in the
+world. You tell me that the world is better for my work; that I have
+offered my people beauty and a sort of truth, which they had never
+dreamed of until I revealed it? Yet what inspired me was the shadow
+only, for I had never seen the substance; I had never believed I should
+ever see the living source of the shadows which inspired me. And now I
+see; now I have seen with my own eyes. Now the confession of faith is no
+longer a blind creed, born of instinct. You live! You are you! What I
+believed from necessity I find proved in fact. The occult no longer can
+sway one who has seen. And you, who, without your knowledge or mine,
+have always been the one and only source of any good in me or in my
+work--why is it strange that I loved you at first sight?--that I
+worshiped you at first breath?--I, who, like him who raises his altar to
+'the unknown god,' raised my altar to truth and beauty? And a miracle
+has answered me."
+
+She rose, the beautiful dazed eyes meeting his, both hands clasping the
+ninth volume of Lamour's great monograph to her breast as though to
+protect it from him--from him who was threatening her, enthralling her,
+thrilling her with his magic voice, his enchanted youth, the masterful
+mystery of his eyes. What was he saying to her? What was this mounting
+intoxication sweeping her senses--this delicious menace threatening her
+very will? What did he want with her? What was he asking? What was he
+doing now--with both her hands in his, and her gaze deeply lost in
+his--and the ninth volume of Lamour on the floor between them, sprawling
+there, abandoned, waving its helpless, discredited leaves in
+air--discredited, abandoned, obsolete as her own specialty--her life's
+work! He had taken that, too--taken her life's work from her. And in
+return she was holding nothing!--nothing except a young man's
+hands--strong, muscular hands which, after all, were holding her own
+imprisoned. So she had nothing in exchange for the ninth volume of
+Lamour; and her life's work had been annihilated by a smile; and she was
+very much alone in the world--very isolated and very youthful.
+
+After a while she emerged from the chaos of attempted reflection and
+listened to what he was saying. He spoke very quietly, very distinctly,
+not sparing himself, laying bare every deception without involving
+anybody except himself.
+
+He told her the entire history of his case, excluding Mr. Keen in
+person; he told her about his aunt, about his birthday, about his
+determination to let the legacy go. Then in a very manly way he told her
+that he had never before loved a woman; and fell silent, her hands a
+dead weight in his.
+
+She was surprised that she could experience no resentment. A curious
+inertia crept over her. She was tired of expectancy, tired of effort,
+weary of the burden of decision. Life and its problems overweighted her.
+Her eyes wandered to his broad young shoulders, then were raised to his
+face.
+
+"What shall we do?" she asked innocently.
+
+Unresisting, she suffered him to explain. His explanation was not
+elaborate; he only touched his lips to her hands and straightened up, a
+trifle pale.
+
+After a moment they walked together to the door and he took his hat and
+gloves from the rack.
+
+"Will you come to-morrow morning?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come early. I am quite certain of how matters are with me. Everything
+has gone out of my life--everything I once cared for--all the familiar
+things. So come early, for I am quite alone without you."
+
+"And I without you, Rosalind."
+
+"That is only right," she said simply. "I shall cast no more shadows for
+you. . . . Are you going? . . . Oh, I know it is best that you should
+go, but--"
+
+He halted. She laid both hands in his.
+
+"We both have it," she faltered--"every symptom. And--you will come
+early, won't you?"
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Tracer of Lost Persons, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13180 ***